


Between the Motion and the Act

by ifitwasribald



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-02-04 12:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12771453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifitwasribald/pseuds/ifitwasribald
Summary: After the events in Sokovia and  a stint in the Raft, Bruce didn’t expect—or want—to find a place again with the Avengers.  But Bruce’s life never has gone the way he planned.





	1. Chapter 1

There were things Bruce knew, and things he didn’t, and it was getting hard to keep them straight. 

Some of the things he knew were pretty obvious. He knew he was in a cell. He knew the Other Guy could break out of it—the Other Guy could break out of anything—and that if he did, a lot of assholes who almost deserved it would be smears on the concrete. 

He knew that being locked away was partly his own damn fault, but mostly Ross’s fault for not giving a shit who got hurt and knowing that Bruce had to.

He didn’t know where the cell was or who else Ross had locked up, or what Ross hoped to gain from any of it. 

He thought he knew when they brought in Maximoff, because he could feel the little witch’s mind somewhere just under his skin, where her presence made the Other Guy grumble and stir. But then the sensation was gone, and Bruce was left to wonder if he knew anything at all. 

The guard came late that day, the one Bruce hated the most. He was a kid, barely twenty, and he liked to talk. The Kid only joined the Army to pay for school, and it was his dumb luck that he ended up on special assignment here. He wrote letters to his mother every week. He was the most effective guard Bruce could have had.

He placed the tray on the ground, with the same apologetic smile he offered with every meal since Bruce arrived.

“Anything new?” Bruce tried to keep it casual, like it was nothing but a pleasantry. 

The kid’s mouth opened, halfway to blurting out some fervent agreement before he caught himself. “No, Sir.” He caught himself again, embarrassed as always to lack an appropriate form of address for Bruce. “I mean, no.”

He paused for a moment before his training overcame his loquacious nature and he left, shutting the door firmly behind him. 

The Kid had no idea what Bruce was, let alone that his role as captor was less trained guard than human shield. Bruce didn’t have the heart to tell him. 

The lab tech knew, though, which is how Bruce had gotten away with refusing every medical test she was supposed to be running. Bruce wondered how long it would be until she got herself replaced by somebody willing to press the issue. And what he’d do then.

It wasn’t going to be today, though. The door to his cell remained firmly shut until another guard—this time one of the assholes he didn’t mind so much—came in with the evening meal. The guy made a show of dropping the tray, letting the food land mostly on the floor, and gave Bruce a shit eating grin. “Oops.”

Bruce closed his eyes, took a long, slow breath, and didn’t break the bastard’s skull into tiny shards. When Bruce opened his eyes again, the guard was gone, and Bruce was left to pick what passed for a meal off the floor and choke it down, breathing anger in and out like it was the fresh air he so sorely lacked. 

Not for the first time since he arrived there—not for the thousandth time—he thought of letting it loose. It would be so easy. It would feel so good. He let himself imagine it, revel in the idea, the knowledge of what he could do. He reminded himself that he wasn’t trapped there—not really. It was his choice, and choosing mercy wasn’t the same as letting them win.

He almost believed it.

As he finally slipped into a troubled sleep, he found himself remembering the touch of the Maximoff girl’s mind, sure again that it was real.

 

The next six days passed more or less the same as the previous thirty-four. Two meals a day, brief interactions with the same handful of guards, and four white walls numbing his mind with their flat, immutable presence. 

Bruce tried to keep to his self-imposed routine, but he couldn't escape the sense that something had changed. The Kid seemed a little edgier than usual, the Asshole that much more likely to snap. The other guards moving just a little faster, like they had somewhere else to be.

Bruce knew better than to trust his perceptions—no matter what he did, he knew that sooner or later the situation would get to him. Solitude had never been a problem, but solitary confinement was a different experience entirely, one that had broken more stable minds than his.

So maybe the Kid’s nerves were the same as they’d always been, the Asshole’s temper no more odious than before. Maybe Bruce’s mind was creating differences out of a desperate need to escape the slow repetition of his days.

On the seventh day after something or nothing changed, the Asshole threw the breakfast tray on the floor and turned without a word, and Bruce couldn’t keep his curiosity in check.

“You’re in a good mood this morning.”

He stopped. “Fuck you. Like I need a mouthy shit like you making my day worse.”

Bruce let his lips curve into a bland smile. “You’ll forgive me if I can't sympathize.” He gestures to the walls around him.

The Asshole turned and spat onto the tray, then smirked at Bruce. “Bon appétit.”

Four hours later, Bruce was still contemplating whether he was hungry enough to eat his breakfast when a claxon split the air. The sound tore through him, set his heart racing and coated his throat with the bitter taste of adrenaline. He took a couple of breaths, willing the Other Guy to stay put, and waited for something to happen.

But it didn’t.

The alarm continued to sound, drowning out anything else he might have heard. His door stayed resolutely closed, and whatever was happening beyond it remained a mystery.

Then he felt it, clear as day this time, and about as subtle as a bullet to the head. Wanda Maximoff, broadcasting distress and hope in equal measure to him and probably everybody else in the building. He collapsed onto his mattress and gathered everything he had to calm his racing heart.

It wasn't the same as the surging fury and terror he'd felt in Johannesburg, wasn't directed at him at all, but the Other Guy obviously remembered, because Bruce could feel him howling in rage and clawing his way to the surface. 

Bruce bent over and clutched his head, a part of him desperate to keep control despite all his instincts screaming that it was time, that he’d never have a better chance than this. He felt his clothes tighten around him, and let out a choked sob as he felt himself begin to give way.

But then the door to his cell slammed inward, and he lifted his head. There she stood, her eyes blazing with red light. 

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD.” He was yelling and begging all at once, and abruptly the touch of her mind subsided. 

She mumbled out what might have been an apology, but Bruce was too busy fighting for control to pay attention. 

“We have to go,” she urged.

Bruce laughed. Not the most stable response, maybe, but probably still better than going green. “We? Since when is there a we?”

“Since—” But she didn’t get to finish. The Kid, of all people, lunged from behind her and stabbed. It must have been a syringe of some sedative, and a strong one, because Maximoff dropped like a stone. 

The Kid stared blankly at Bruce over Maximoff's unconscious form, as if surprised by what he’d done. Bruce didn't hesitate. He rushed the Kid, grabbed him by one arm and shoved, sending him stumbling into the cell while Bruce scrambled out of it and shut the door. 

And then there he was, standing in the hallway that had felt so impossibly far away until a moment before. His heart surged with giddy, almost hysterical relief. 

Bruce took a breath and tried to steady himself. He had to move, had to get the hell out of there before someone started shooting at him. Or worse. 

He looked down at Maximoff, and for one unworthy moment considered leaving her there. She was sure as hell no friend of his, and he could still still feel the Other Guy’s restless objection to her presence. But she had come for him, and he couldn’t repay that by leaving her to Ross’s tender mercies. 

He picked her up in a fireman’s carry and got moving, trying as he went to read the details of the curving hallway for any indication of which way was out. Even when he managed to get to a stairwell he still didn't know—were they underground or above it? There hadn’t been any windows anywhere he’d seen, and he’d been as dead to the world as Maximoff was now when they brought him in.

Then he heard the clang of metal on metal from above. He curbed the instinct to run in the opposite direction and started up. He couldn’t know what the commotion was, but logically if the guards were putting up a fight, it had to be someplace that mattered, and in a prison nothing mattered more than the exit.

“Wanda!” 

Relief washed over Bruce as he recognized the voice. Steve was here. 

Hope gave him renewed energy, and he shifted Wanda on his back and started up toward Steve, toward what had to be the way out. His thighs burned and his shoulders ached by the time he reached the top, but his heart sang with the promise of rescue. 

He burst through the door into another corridor. He heard footsteps stop some distance away and start back toward them. 

“Wanda, where the hell did you—” Steve came running around the bend of the hallway and stopped again. “Bruce? What—” He saw Wanda, then, and his face fell. “Is she—”

Bruce shook his head. “Tranqued. I think she’ll be fine.”

“Okay. One of the guards radioed for reinforcements before I got to him, so we need to go.”

Bruce nodded, unable to articulate the depths of his agreement. “Lead the way.”

The trip to the surface passed in a blur. After so many long days of staring at a blank wall, even the monotonous corridors overwhelmed Bruce’s senses, and when they emerged to bright sunlight and an endless ocean view Bruce had to drop his eyes to his shoes just to keep walking. 

Steve lead him not to the quinjet he was expecting, but rather an incongruously luxurious helicopter. Bruce laid Maximoff across two of the seats and began a rough examination, relying on old habits to keep himself steady and focused as he took her pulse and checked her pupils. No obvious signs of anything worse than a strong sedative, but she’d need to be watched. The tranq had probably been designed for him, and that could be incredibly dangerous for an ordinary human. And maybe for her too.

“Where are the others? We’re about out of time.” Steve slung himself into the helicopter. Bruce looked up to see that he was talking to the guy at the controls. He looked familiar—Bruce wasn't sure they’d met, but he thought so. Sam, if he was remembering right. In any case, he wore the same prison uniform Bruce did, and his fingers drummed impatiently on the dashboard. 

Bruce heard footsteps and felt his stomach sink, sure for an instant that it was the guards’ reinforcements, coming to drag him back to his cell. 

But no. When he forced himself to look up, he saw Clint pelting across the surface of the floating prison, lugging an oversized duffle bag and followed by another guy, similarly laden.

Clint pulled himself up and clapped Steve on the back from behind. “Thanks for waiting for us to get our stuff.” He surveyed the helicopter. “Nice ride. Where’d this come from?”

“Swiped it from Tony,” Steve admitted.

Clint’s face soured. “Good. When we’re through, I can use it for target practice.”

Steve frowned and looked away. 

“You got my wings?” Sam called back.

“Got ‘em.” That from the guy Bruce didn't know. 

“Everybody in?” Steve asked. “We’ve got to get a move on.”

“We’re good to go, Cap.” Clint collapsed into one of the seats and stared darkly at the prison’s surface as the helicopter lifted them away.

They all sat in silence as the prison receded in the distance. When it finally disappeared behind the horizon, it was like a spell had been broken, and it seemed to Bruce that everyone began speaking at once.

It was too much—more words in a minute than he’d heard in the previous month, and Bruce couldn’t follow any of it. He took Maximoff’s vitals again, more to have something to do than because he expected any change. Keeping to a doctorly routine helped keep his mind off everything else. And helped him forget, too, what she’d done to him. The others seemed to see her as a teammate, so presumably they had reason to trust her. Maybe that was reason enough for him to try, or at least reason enough not to throttle her where she lay.

He didn’t look up from her until he felt a hand on his shoulder and suddenly realized that Clint had spoken to him. “She OK?”

“I think so. Tranqs.”

Clint nodded. “Thanks for coming to get us. Didn’t realize Steve knew how to track you down.” Clint must have seen the surprise on Bruce’s face, because he paused, looked Bruce up and down, and gestured at his clothes. “Infiltration, or—”

Bruce shook his head.

“Oh. Crap. What’d Ross get you for?”

“For?”

Clint didn’t seem to hear the question, and Bruce realized he might not have managed to speak it aloud. “You refuse to sign? Or did Cap get you involved in the whole fiasco too?”

“Sign what?” Bruce did manage to speak that time. 

Clint stopped. “The Accords? The— How long were you in there?”

“Six weeks.”

“Shit. So, what excuse did they use for—”

“I assume the usual.” Bruce attempted a smile. “Not that anyone bothered to tell me. Ross has never been big on legalities.”

“He seems to like them well enough when they go his way.”

Bruce wasn't sure what to make of that. “What happened? Why were you in there? I didn't think Ross cared about normal humans. No offense.”

Clint laughed. “None taken. But apparently after— well, after a lot of things, the UN decided—”

“The United Nations is backing Ross now?” Bruce felt a hollow pit open in his stomach—cold fear in place of the surging rage so familiar to him. But before he could even begin to get his head around the information, Maximoff murmured and stirred. 

Clint placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Wanda. We’re out.”

“Out?” She opened her eyes, took in the helicopter’s interior and the sky out the window. “Out,” she agreed with satisfaction. “Good.”

Bruce turned away to let them speak, and found himself face to face with the man he didn't know. 

“So, you were in there too?” he asked. “Wow, that place sucked, right?”

Bruce almost laughed. “Yeah. How long were you there?” 

“They, uh, they brought us in a week ago.”

Right. Which explained the touch of Maximoff’s mind then, before the guards had done whatever they did to shut down her powers.

The brief lull in the conversation seemed to make the guy uncomfortable. “I'm Scott, by the way. Scott Lang. Maybe you've heard of me, I'm kind of an Avenger.”

Bruce shook his head. “I've been a little out of the loop.”

“And you’re—?”

“Bruce Banner.”

“Bruce— oh.” Scott blinked. “Oh,” he said again. “That’s, well. How are you feeling? Do you need anything? Because I could—”

Bruce did laugh then, though he wasn't sure it was the sort of laugh that would reassure. “I'm fine. Thanks.”

“Right, sure. Well, hey, awesome to meet you.” Scott looked away, fingers drumming against the seat. For a few minutes he watched the ocean below them, but that was apparently all the silence he could stand. “So, Cap, did you and your friend make out okay with the, uh, whole situation?”

“We did what we needed to.” Steve cleared his throat, and when the continued his voice sounded steadier. “I want you to know I appreciate your help.”

Scott sat up straighter, seeming to bloom under Steve’s praise, but deflated a little as Steve continued.

“I know the sacrifices you made.”

Clint’s jaw tightened. “So, what's the plan, anyway? I mean, not that I'm not grateful to be out of there, but we didn't exactly do it the legal way. Should we be looking over our shoulders for Stark and his posse?”

The cold pit in Bruce’s stomach turned itself over and seemed to grow a little bigger in the process. He thought of asking what Clint meant, but decided he wasn’t ready yet to know.

“I hope not.” Steve rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But Ross has other options at his disposal, so we’re going to have to be careful. Clint, Natasha’s made contact with Laura—she and the kids are okay, and their cover seems to be holding up. You can go back—”

“And maybe fuck that up for them.”

“Natasha doesn’t think so, and you know she wouldn't take chances. But it’s up to you.”

Clint nodded and watched his hands, apparently lost to his own thoughts.

“Scott, I talked to Dr. Pym, and he’s worked something out. It’s not ideal, but it sounds like you could still see your daughter.”

Scott’s face bloomed with obvious relief. “That’s— that’s great. Whatever it is, I’m in.”

Wanda regarded Clint and Scott with sad eyes, and turned back to Steve. “So they go to their families. Where do we go?”

“If you've got people you want to see—”

“You know I have no people.”

Steve shook his head. “You've got people. We may be fugitives now, but we have each other. And, we’ve got support.” He pulled an envelope out of his bag and handed it to Wanda. “Natasha sends her regards.” He placed another beside Sam. “Money, and IDs— good ones.” He gave Bruce an apologetic smile and pulled some cash out of his own envelope to hand over. “She didn’t know you were in there.”

Bruce rubbed the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other, and said nothing. He hadn’t been able to face her after Sokovia—hadn’t been sure he wanted to—and nothing about his time in the prison or the mess he’d emerged to changed that.

“So this is what we have.” Wanda opened a passport from her envelope. “False papers, false names.”

Steve nodded seriously. “It's not much,” he agreed. 

“Better than prison,” Sam offered. “But at some point I am going to need more specific directions than ‘west.’”

“Right. First stop’s a safe house in Maine. Scott and Clint can head home from there. The rest of us can rest up, figure out what's next.”

No one spoke. 

After a moment, Steve fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and gave it to Sam. “Coordinates are here.”

Sam glanced at the paper and nodded. “Okay then. Next stop, middle of nowhere.” 

The rest of the flight passed in silence.


	2. Chapter 2

The safe house was a small hunting cabin—two cramped rooms in poor repair. Exhausted, they spoke little, ate a supper of the cold canned foods they found tucked in a corner, and collapsed on bunks and mats not long after dark. 

Bruce woke early the next morning, startled by the light of dawn. The warm sun, the songs of birds outside, even the scent of mildew that hung on everything in the cabin felt unreal, impossible. As if forty-one days in a cell had been enough for him to forget the outside world entirely.

He rose quietly and padded outside—east, toward the rising sun. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, focus on his breathing and leave everything else behind for a moment. But his thoughts intruded, demanding his attention to questions he couldn't even begin to answer. Questions that only brought on other questions, and whose answers he was pretty sure he didn't want to know. 

He opened his eyes and turned back to the cabin. A little ways off stood a geriatric generator. It was broken—probably had been for some time by the looks of it—but there was still plenty of fuel. There didn’t seem to be a decent set of tools around, let alone spare parts, but Bruce had worked with less.

The sun still hung low in the sky when his stomach tightened and he felt the Other Guy reach for the surface. He looked up to see Maximoff watching him work, her eyes solemn. 

He cast about his mind for any intrusion, anything that could explain his reaction to her presence. But she didn't seem to be in there. A remnant from the first time she’d meddled with his mind, he supposed. Enough of a connection that the Other Guy could feel when she came near. He wondered if she knew. 

But he didn't ask. Instead, he said what he should have before. “You came for me. In there. Thank you.” The words came grudgingly from his mouth. He could still feel the shame of returning to himself after Johannesburg, and whatever she’d done since then, her proximity still made him think of dust and destruction.

She nodded, seeming somehow flustered by his thanks. “Of course. I couldn’t leave you there.”

Except that she could have. He might have, if it had been the other way around. “Well, I appreciate it.” That much, at least, was true.

She didn't answer, and neither did she turn to leave. After a moment, Bruce returned to his work. 

The fuel valve turned out to be most of the problem—he’d thought it was just rusted shut, but in fact it had rusted through. One wrong turn and it snapped. He cursed, tossed his makeshift wrench aside, and slumped back against a tree. 

“I’m not sure there is anything worth powering in there anyway.”

Bruce looked up, almost startled to find that she was still there. He shook his head. “Water pump. Unless you wanted to haul in water from the nearest stream.” For all he knew she could do it with a wave of her hands, but he doubted it. “Potable water in there won't last long.”

“Ah, yes. Well. We may not be here long.”

“You got someplace to be?” 

She shook her head, and suddenly looked down. Bruce realized with a pang of surprise that she was holding back tears. 

“I'm sorry.”

She managed a pained smile. “You’ve done this before, yes? Gone—” she fished for the phrase, “‘on the lam’?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you do? To have no place…” She trailed off for a moment, then shrugged. “I had my brother. And then I had a team. The ‘Avengers.’” She laughed, bitter. “Some team.”

“What happened? With the UN, with Tony?” His head still spun with questions, too jumbled for him to even form them properly. 

She twined her hands together as she spoke. “Stark brought us a choice—sign the Accords or ‘retire.’ Except that retiring was never an option, for me.”

“And the Accords are—?”

“To put us under the control of— they said the United Nations, but they meant Ross.”

“And they locked you up for refusing?”

“I did not refuse. I did not decide. Tony Stark locked me up anyway.”

Bruce’s stomach clenched, and Wanda must have read his expression because she waved dismissively. 

“Not at the Raft. ‘House arrest.’ But I didn’t stay arrested. There was a fight. Stark and his people tried to capture Steve and his friend. We helped them escape. For this we were sent to the Raft.”

“And they were trying to catch Steve because—” Bruce still felt like he was trying to put together a puzzle with a handful of pieces and some pocket lint. 

“His friend was a fugitive already. Framed for a bombing.”

“I see.” Though he didn’t—not really. He opened his mouth to form another question, but Scott’s voice cut through the conversation before he could decide what to ask. 

“There you are.” His eyes lighted on Bruce. “Hey, nice jenny. It working?”

Bruce shook his head. “Not yet.”

Scott knelt beside Bruce and peered into the guts of the generator. "Huh."

Wanda returned to the cabin as Bruce and Scott prodded the generator back to life. Scott had a knack for the small parts—Bruce couldn't quite figure out how he was getting them in place, but whatever he was doing made the job a hell of a lot easier. 

Scott's most helpful contribution, though, was his ability to babble with minimal contributions from Bruce. It meant Bruce could fill his mind with the work and the chatter and leave only a part of his brain to mull over everything Wanda had explained. By mid-morning they had the generator purring to life, and Bruce had to find something else to occupy himself.

He walked off a little ways, going nowhere in particular. When he heard a sharp crack, and another, and another in a quick rhythm, he headed toward the noise.

It was Steve, cutting a recently fallen tree down to kindling.

Bruce thought of turning away and leaving him in peace—God knew he probably needed it. But the restless irritation of his unanswered questions and their uncertain future prodded him forward. 

Steve looked up as he approached. "You need something?"

It was as close to unfriendly as Bruce had ever heard him, and only then did Bruce notice just how beaten down Steve looked.

"I'm sorry. I should—" Bruce gestured back toward the cabin.

Steve put down the axe and sat back against the stump. "No. I'm sorry. It's been a rough couple of weeks, but I guess you had worse."

"Maybe. I've got to admit, I'm a little—" he gestured vaguely. "Confused. A guy gets thrown in a dark hole for a month and suddenly the whole world's changed. Wanda tells me you and Tony came to blows."

Steve attempted a smile. "That can't be that much of a surprise."

Bruce tried to laugh. Couldn't. "It sounded serious," he said quietly.

The smile disappeared. "It was."

"Why?"

Steve shrugged. "I had a mission. He was in my way."

"That's what doesn't make sense. I know you and he don't always see eye to eye, but at the end of the day—"

"That's what I thought too. But not at the end of that day, I guess. I got a friend, and he— he was in some trouble. Wasn't his fault, but the higher ups didn't care.” He picked up the axe again, only to bring it back down, hard, and leave it lodged in the log. “And Tony didn't either." Steve shook his head. "It's a long story."

Bruce ached to ask him to tell it, but instead he laid one tentative hand on Steve’s shoulder. "Where does that leave you?" He asked quietly. 

Steve looked at his empty hands. "I really don't know."

 

Clint and Scott hiked out around noon, bound for the nearest bus depot, and from there, home. 

The rest of them spent the afternoon trying to keep busy. Bruce found a few bits and pieces of machinery to occupy him. He wasn't sure what Sam or Steve or Wanda did with their time, but by nightfall, when they gathered around the campfire, they were stocked with fresh-caught fish and an impressive heap of firewood.

They ate to the rustle and birdsong of the forest around them. Bruce ate slowly, savoring the food and the open air. He still felt slow, sluggish, even as his thoughts raced in all directions. So even when he put aside the bones of his meal, he didn't break the silence. 

And neither did anyone else, for a time. Wordlessly, Sam brought out a bottle of bourbon. He uncapped it and took a long pull before handing it off to Wanda. She held it uncertainly for a moment, then took a tentative sip, followed by a longer swallow. When the bottle came to Bruce, he drank as well, the liquor burning down his throat. Steve took a polite sip, and Bruce vaguely remembered that with his metabolism, Steve wouldn't feel the alcohol. A shame, tonight. Judging by Steve’s face, he thought the same. 

They passed the bottle around twice, three times, before Sam spoke. 

“So, what’d we miss?” He looked up and seemed to read Steve’s reluctance. “Y’know, any good ball games? The Nats beat the Orioles?”

“Sorry, I missed the box scores. I've been a little busy.”

“Yeah, fair enough.”

They lapsed into silence again, and when the bottle reached Steve again, he drank deep, then made a face and stood. “I better hit the hay.” He thrust the bottle at Sam and disappeared into the cabin. 

“He is really not coping.” Sam took a drink. “Not that I blame the guy.”

“What happened to his friend?” Bruce asked. 

“I think he escaped with Steve after the battle,” Wanda offered, “but I don't know what happened after that.”

“Steve said something about him being ‘on ice,’” Sam answered. “No idea what that means, but he's not happy about it.”

“How could he be?” Wanda asked. “He thought he was no longer alone, and now—”

“He isn't alone.” Sam sounded offended, almost hurt.

“Bucky was more than a friend, I think.”

“Wait, you mean they were—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I don't know. But Bucky means more to him than that.”

Her simple confidence struck a dissonant chord, and in spite of the heat from the fire and the alcohol in his veins, Bruce felt cold. “How do you know?”

She didn't turn her gaze away from the fire. “Did I read his mind, you mean?” Her voice was like ice. 

“Yes.” He spat the word, couldn't help it, couldn’t even care if it was unfair. As if fair meant a damn thing after the damage she'd caused—the damage they'd caused together—in Johannesburg. 

“I do not read minds. I only… push them. And I do not do that anymore.”

“And I'm supposed to trust that?”

“You have no other choice. Or would you do as Ross did? Lock my body in a cell and my mind in a—” Her hands moved to her temples as if to shield herself. She look a long, shuddering breath, and returned them to her lap. “I don’t know what they did to my mind. But it was—” She paused, searching for the word. “Terrible.” The quiet way she said it carried the weight of understatement.

He should sympathize—he did, God knew—but that couldn't dampen the rage that welled in the back of his mind whenever he laid eyes on her. “So was what you did to me,” he told her, his voice quiet. “And to Tony. Why should I trust that you won’t—”

Bruce stopped short at Sam’s low chuckle. “You gotta admit that's a little rich, coming from you. Why should I trust that you aren't about to turn green and flatten us both into the ground?"

Bruce let out a long breath and reminded himself that Sam wasn't wrong. "Fair enough." He looked down to find the bottle in his hands, and only just refrained from taking another drink. "To be honest, with our track records, maybe the both of us should be under somebody else's control." He shook his head. "But it isn't possible. Not for me. And maybe not for her, either." He passed the bottle to Sam. "What's your deal anyway? A friend of Cap's, right?"

"Yeah. And an Avenger."

"But not enhanced?"

"Nope. 100% good old fashioned human over here. With some nice equipment backing me up." He took a swallow and passed the bottle off to Wanda. 

"Then you don't know how good you've got it. You can put the tech away, be a person." He gestured to Wanda. "Not like us freaks."

She replied by hoisting the bottle, as if in a toast, and drinking. "To the freaks. Perhaps we will inherit the Earth."

"I hope not." He kicked at the dirt under his feet. "So the Accords, they were trying to keep people like us in jail?"

"Or just under control,” Sam answered. “Idea was that a UN taskforce would say where the Avengers go, where they don't. Same for any other supers who wanted to flex their muscles."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"You don't have a lot of experience following orders, do you?"

“Not really, no."

"Yeah, well. People who give orders aren't any better than anybody else." Sam took the bottle Wanda offered and passed it from one hand to the other, and back again, watching the remaining liquor in the dim firelight. "I don't care who they are or who they answer to—they don't know right and wrong better than I do. Let alone a guy like Cap.”

"Gotta admit I wouldn't have expected him to go up against the UN," Bruce mused. But when he thought about it, he realized that that was wrong. Something about Steve's inflexible moral code felt like allegiance to a higher authority, but the truth was that Steve followed his own north star, and only his staunch rectitude made that attitude seem more admirable than dangerous. "Yeah, okay. I can see it. But still, I can’t imagine the situation’s sitting well with him, even without losing his friend." He laughed. “As opposed to the three of us, models of stability.”

Wanda laughed at that, and the sound if it felt wrong in Bruce’s ears—unsteady in a way that made the hairs rise on his neck. He looked down at his own hands and chuckled a little to himself. He looked up at Sam. “Is this what it’s like to be around me?”

“Not really. I trust Wanda. You, I don’t know.”

Bruce was surprised to find that that stung. How he could have forgotten what he was after 41 straight days in a cell as a reminder, he really didn’t know. 

“But Steve thinks you’re all right,” Sam added, “and that’s good enough for me.”

 

It was better than the prison. Bruce had to remind himself of that, repeatedly, because for all the material comforts of the outdoors, of freedom and the lack of sadistic assholes taking out their frustration on him, the safe house still felt like a form of torture. He had nothing in particular to do—no plans, no purpose, no notes or equipment that would allow him to pursue any of his pet research. And always, Wanda’s presence stirring the Other Guy to a vague itch at the back of his mind. 

And if it was bad for him, he was pretty sure it was worse for the others. Steve brooded endlessly and avoided all conversation. Wanda mostly sat, alone, staring grimly at into the forest. Sam occupied himself by fussing over both of them and keeping the cabin stocked with firewood and fish, but even so he seemed at a loss to fill the time.

So on the fourth day, it was a relief when Sam came out of the cabin waving the radio that Bruce had restored to working order earlier that morning. 

"There's a fire. Not far from here, which means too far from anyplace with a fire and rescue team. There's some hikers radioing for help, and I don't think there's anyone else close enough to hear."

Steve's whole bearing changed, from the resigned slump he'd worn since they arrived at the safehouse to his usual posture, and in spite of himself, Bruce felt an unexpected wash of relief to see it.

“Let’s go,” Steve said.

They took the helicopter—it was surprisingly maneuverable for something designed for luxury—and within minutes they could smell the smoke. Sam took the chopper around the blaze in a long arc, looking for the outcropping that the hikers had described in their distress call. When it came into view, it was clear that they'd only just made it in time. Smoke billowed up from below, and fire raged all across the slope to the south.

They descended, bumping around in the turbulence of the superheated air, until they could see the hikers waving their hands frantically. Steve threw the ladder out the door and started down.

Bruce, for his part, gripped his seat and cursed himself for acceding to Steve's logic that the hikers might need medical attention faster than the team could get them anyplace else. 

So far, there was nothing for him to do but wait, and keep the Other Guy at bay.

"How's he doing?" Sam asked, his voice just loud enough to carry over the chopper blades.

"He is almost to the ground," Wanda reported, leaning just slightly out the door, her knuckles white where they gripped the safety bar.

They waited, shifting with the irregular motion of the chopper. Bruce breathed as steadily as he could manage and tried not to think of what the Other Guy would do if he got tossed out the side. Not a lot of people around here, at least.

Another gust of wind rocked them, this one noticeably hotter than before. More waiting. More wind.

"He's got them," Wanda finally confirmed. "They're coming up."

Bruce could hear the crackle and roar of the fire below, could feel his stomach clench a little tighter each time a new gust buffeted the helicopter. 

"Still coming. Wait." Wanda cursed and leaned out. "The ladder—"

Bruce forced himself over to her, needing to know what had happened more than he needed to stay where he was. He grabbed the handhold hard and looked down.

An older woman was making her way up the ladder, one rung at a time, and clinging for dear life to each one. Below her, maybe 10 meters down, Steve helped a young man with the climb. Between them a piece of debris clung to the ladder. It glowed bright, more a hot coal than whatever it used to be.

Bruce felt himself leaning forward, as if anything he could do would change what was happening eight meters down.

Wanda gestured, and red light flowed from her fingertips, down toward the ember. But before it got there, a sharp snap split the air, and the helicopter jerked as the ladder shifted to hang from just one side. 

The first hiker reached the top, and Bruce pulled her in. He could only just see the play of light that poured from Wanda, down and down and down, but apparently it wasn't enough, because suddenly the helicopter surged upward as the ladder fell away.

"Shit, shit, goddamnit." Sam’s litany of curses was only just audible over the roar of the blaze. The chopper tipped and dropped and bobbed up again. "I can't— Fuck, I can't get any lower."

"Do not try," Wanda yelled back. "I will get them." She let her fingers slip off the safety bar, and before Bruce could even move she was gone.

"Did she just jump?" Sam yelled back.

Bruce couldn’t answer. Amid all the motion, he could barely see anything below. When he finally got himself oriented, he could make out Steve and the hiker, too close to the blaze. But then everything shifted, the wall of fire cutting off as if at an invisible boundary a few meters away from them. Still too close for comfort.

The scene shrank as the chopper surged upward, but Bruce thought he saw a third figure joining the two of them before they spun under a new gust of wind and Bruce lost sight of everything but the flames.

"Do you see them? I can't get this thing to—" Underneath Sam's determined tone, Bruce could hear welling panic.

"I don't know. I—" But then he saw it—Wanda's red glow bursting upward. It expanded, widening out until it encased a huge swath of air, almost up to their level. “There!”

"You think?" The chopper shifted, and they swooped in. 

As they evened out in the still air between the tendrils of Wanda's magic the sound of the blaze dropped away, and it was as if they flew through a calm, quiet day.

“How long can she keep this up?” Bruce called back. 

“Let’s hope long enough.” Sam landed them in the midst of it all, and Bruce helped pull the second hiker into the chopper. Steve climbed in next, holding Wanda close. She shook with the effort, her eyes blazing red against her pale face.

"Let's go, let's go." Steve hauled the door closed behind them, and they lifted, up and away.

As they did, Wanda collapsed into Steve's arms, and suddenly the air around them was hot again, and turbulent. The chopper struggled against it, and Bruce had to force himself to keep breathing as they bumped up and down, and finally broke free.

As the fires receded behind them, Bruce placed two fingers at Wanda’s pulse point, and brushed aside a strand of hair to feel her forehead. A little warm, the heartbeat a little fast, but nothing really alarming.

“Does she do this a lot?” he asked Steve.

“Sometimes—when she stretches herself too far. She just needs rest.”

Bruce nodded. Satisfied that Wanda didn’t need his attention, he turned to give the hikers a quick once over. One had a sprained ankle, and both were shaken up, but neither seemed in any danger.

"Who are you people?" one of them asked. 

"We're, uh," Steve looked away, and Bruce wondered if this was the first time it occurred to him that they'd just blown their cover. "Just good samaritans."

"No," the guy continued. "That— that was— Are you some of those supers? Inhumans or something?" He paused. "Wait. That whole glowy thing. Is she—"

"She's a good samaritan too," the other hiker finished for him. "And that's all we need to know, isn't it, Brian?"

Brian ducked his head and went back to nursing his ankle.

"I appreciate that, ma'am."

"And I appreciate being alive right now." She patted Steve on the arm. "I follow the news, and I don't know what all is going on, but I don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

They flew in silence to the helipad of the nearest hospital, where they deposited the hikers and lifted away again, back to the cabin.

Bruce began to gather his things, some of the food, and a few odds and ends that looked useful. He shook out a musty old bag and packed up, finding himself almost relieved to do so.

Steve opened the door, and Bruce realized that he felt even more relieved to see Steve's bearing—weary, but still crisply upright, not the sagging shoulders and dark eyes of the past days.

"Where next?" Bruce asked.

Steve glanced away, and Bruce felt guilty at bringing back some of the weight of their situation. "Guess we can't stay here, huh?"

"No. Even if the hikers don't—"

Steve nodded. "Yeah." He took a breath. "Well, it'll do us good anyway. We belong out in the world. Just because we're fugitives doesn't mean we can't do some good, does it?"

The hope in his frame was such a relief that Bruce couldn’t bring himself to disagree.


	3. Chapter 3

They split up—less conspicuous that way. Sam and Steve took the chopper with plans to ditch it somewhere even more remote and then make their way back to civilization. 

That left Bruce and Wanda to hike out from the cabin. Hesitant to choose the town Clint and Scott had gone through, they picked another route, one that necessitated a few days of walking. Luckily, the weather was mild and the beat up old packs at the cabin would hold most of what they needed in relative comfort. 

Still, it was slow going. Wanda’s skin seemed paler than usual, and though she insisted she could hold her own on the hike, Bruce wondered if the events of the prior day had taken too much out of her for a trek like this one. Though, he had to admit, after his months-long stay at the Raft he wasn’t in much better shape for walking miles on end.

At first they hiked silently, Bruce leading the way. He could feel her presence behind him, a restless ache that made him walk faster than he ought to, and never let him fall into the easy trance of a long slow hike through a forest that honestly was beautiful. He tried—kept his breathing steady, focused on making each footfall neat and quiet, on making each stride over the uneven terrain about the equal of the one before it. But the Other Guy wouldn't let it go, and as ever, Bruce was at his mercy.

She kept up—whether easily or with difficulty Bruce couldn't bring himself to care. But when they stopped for a meal she looked no paler than before. If anything, the exercise seemed to be doing her good.

He fished field rations out of the pack and handed one over to her. He tore the side off one of his and stuck in the aluminum spoon. It emerged covered in something brown and salty—stew maybe, thought Bruce didn't care enough to really think about it. He ate until it was gone, spoon to packet to mouth and back again. When he was done he licked the spoon clean and slipped it back into the pack. 

He looked over at Wanda. She didn't seem to have taken more than a couple of bites, and now sat still, regarding the glop without expression.

Bruce crumpled the foil in his hands, packing it tightly into itself until it formed a ball. He kept prodding at it, fingers trying to shape it into the tightest sphere he could manage. As close to something to do as he had just then.

"Halvah."

He started at the word. Looked at her. Raised an eyebrow.

"I want a piece of halvah. The kind with nuts inside. Just a slice, a thin one." Her eyes closed and her lips pressed together. He could just make out the tip of her tongue between them, an expression of imagined pleasure. Marred immediately by the expression of disgust as she tasted the residue of their lunch. She brought up a sleeve and wiped it away. "What about you? What do you want?"

He didn't answer—just poked the foil ball in his hands again, pressing a small remaining corner down into the ever rounder surface.

"You have to want something.”

The answer that came to mind was that this was enough—something sealed in and safe, and under his own control to eat when he chose it. Something that hadn't come at the mercy of Ross and his prison. But the idea of desire caught in his mind, and brought along its object. "A burger. A thick one, with cheese."

"Ah," she murmured, almost wistfully. "We are in America. That should not be difficult. Once we leave the woods, anyway."

She was right. A couple of days of hiking and they'd be in a town easily big enough for a decent burger joint. He had money in his pocket. They could sit in a booth like regular people, order burgers and fries and a piece of pie afterwards. It honestly hadn't occurred to him.

"I guess so," he agreed.

She prodded at a clump of leaves underfoot, scraped them aside and poured the remains from her lunch into the hole before pushing them back over to hide the mess. "We should keep moving."

 

They kept moving.

It took them three days to get to Lewiston, and after that first day Bruce found the idea of real food invading his mind as he walked, and ate, and even as he slept. By the time they arrived, he was barely willing to check into a motel for long enough to get the both of them decently cleaned up before tracking down a burger joint.

Wanda watched him with an amused smile as he picked up a menu, turned it over in his hands and put it back. His mind had been made up for days—there was no point reading the specials.

She slid long fingers over her own menu, examining the options almost studiously, until Bruce wanted to grab it from her so that the waitress would see that they were ready and come take their order. Wanda seemed to notice, made a face, and put her own menu down.

When their food arrived, Bruce grabbed up his burger in both hands and took a bite, feeling his body relax into the familiar pleasure of fat and protein. They'd chosen well—the burger was just rare enough, the fries fresh out of the frier, the coffee as terrible as it should be in a burger joint. 

Wanda had finished her sandwich by the time Bruce's attention left his own food. She sipped her milkshake and sifted through her pile of fries before picking out an overdone shard to pop into her mouth.

"So. You have had your burger. Is it what you hoped?"

"Pretty much. Should we try a grocery store next? Find you some halvah?"

She shook her head. "It would not be worth the name." She picked up another fry, but thought better of it, and put it down. "So now we wait."

"That's the plan, yeah," he agreed.

"I hate waiting."

"I’m with you there."

"And when Sam and Steve arrive, then what? We wait some more."

"Yeah."

"What are we waiting for?"

He shrugged. He didn't like it either, and he didn't know what she expected him to say. "To get caught,” he suggested.

She apparently didn’t appreciate the joke—he could see tension flood through her, and felt a stupid surge of satisfaction. He wasn't there to hold her hand through this. He probably shouldn’t be there, with her, at all. But the petty pleasure of shutting her up faded quickly to exhaustion. He shrugged an apology. "I don't know, to not get caught. We aren't waiting for anything. You got any better ideas?"

She looked out the window, pushing her fries around the plate with one idle hand. "Let's catch them instead."

"Uh. Them?"

"Ross's people."

"Oh. So, just the US military, United Nation troops, and apparently Iron Man. No sweat."

She made a face at him. "I hate waiting," she said again.

"Should've thought of that before you turned yourself into a test subject. Waiting's what we do." He took a couple of the fries off her plate. They'd cooled, but they still crunched between his teeth. "Here's better than in prison."

 

Sam and Steve showed up the next evening, too late for all of them to meet. They took a room at a motel across town, keeping their distance. There were rules to follow, ways to keep your head down, and four people with famous faces couldn't very well do that all together.

A litany of all the things they ought to do scrolled through Bruce's mind as he flicked the little burner phone open and shut, debating what message to send. They ought to leave the country, go someplace where the Avengers in general, and Steve in particular, had gotten a little less airplay. They ought to split up, for good—all go their separate ways or at least hide out two by two. And if the others weren't going to do it on their own, Bruce ought to know well enough to press the issue. Sticking with Wanda and Steve and Sam made Bruce less safe, not more, and his presence wasn't any help to them either.

So he ought to tell Steve thanks but no thanks, pack his bag and take his own damn advice.

But instead he thumbed a quick "yeah" to the name of a diner, and half an hour later the four of them sat around over plates full of rubbery eggs and underseasoned home fries.

"So, where next?" Sam said it, but any of them would have. It was the only question to ask, because none of them were ready to do the smart thing.

"Let's go west—split up again, meet in Albany in a week or so."

Bruce shifted in his seat. "Maybe someplace further. Meet in a month. The four of us together— we're a little obvious."

Steve looked away, apparently unwilling to hide his dismay. "Look, you want to head out, you can, but I think we're better off together."

"We’re not.” The words came short and sharp from his throat, and Bruce almost regretted the way all three of them winced. But he wasn’t wrong, and he couldn’t pretend to be. “Someone sees a face that looks like Captain America's, they chalk it up to their imagination. Someone sees him standing next to somebody who looks like the magic chick they saw on CNN, they notice. Tell their friends. Tell the news. Tell the cops. Then somebody comes looking."

Going by the guilty looks on all their faces, none of that was news to any of them.

When Wanda finally spoke, Sam and Steve both looked relieved that she would make the argument for them. "What is the good of freedom if there is nothing for us to do with it? What is the use of going from one shitty motel to another, until— what? If we stay together, at least there’s something."

Her voice was flat, with a bitter, broken edge that scraped over his nerves until he had to remind himself that even the aimless drifting they all had to look forward to was better than she deserved. "It's not just our lives we're playing with," he reminded them.

"No," Steve agreed. "But that goes both ways. We stay together, we're ready to help. There's still work we can do." Steve's hand went to a little radio at his belt—something Bruce hadn't noticed before. "We pay attention, we see when we're needed. Like up at that fire. And between times, you're right, we’ll do what we can to stay off the radar, but we can't give up. If I were going to do that, I might as well have signed Ross's papers."

None of that boded well for their ability to stay under the radar, but Bruce knew no argument he could mount would change their minds. "Then this is where I get off."

Steve regarded him seriously. "If that's what you need to do. You'll be missed."

Silence fell over the table, and Bruce forced himself to take his last few bites, pull out his wallet and drop enough cash on the table to cover their meal. 

He stood.

He looked down and the knapsack. Hoisted it over his shoulder. Looked down at his feet, and then up at the rest of them. 

He didn't go.

 

Wanda and Sam hopped a train headed for Boston—from there to New York, and then Cleveland, where they’d all meet up two weeks later.

That left Bruce and Steve to buy a rusting heap of a car and get it working well enough to get take them through the northern route, dawdling along back roads and unpopular campgrounds to stretch what could have been a twelve hour trip over fourteen days.

The radio crackled and popped as they drove. Bruce found himself relaxing into the rhythm of a long drive—something he hadn't had occasion to do in a long time—but Steve continued to fidget, running his thumb over the tuner, staying in the police frequencies and seeking out a new channel almost as soon as the last town's had faded into a faint hiss.

They'd been driving for four or five hours when an edge of fear cut through the usual murmur of check-ins and dispatches. Steve turned up the volume. "—she's saying he's armed," the voice on the radio continued, clear and calm, but obviously afraid for the caller whose message she relayed. 

"Say again where it is,” a man’s voice answered.

"Rodham Road." Something in the way she said it told him that the answer wasn’t good.

“All right.” Though obviously it wasn’t. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

Light flared at the corner of Bruce's eye, and he glanced over to see the bright rectangle of a StarkPhone in Steve’s hand.

"Should you have that?" It wasn't really a question.

"Natasha set it up." Steve didn't look up from whatever he was doing. "Says it'll stay under the radar as long as we don't use it much. Emergencies only."

"Then put it away." Bruce could hear a hard edge creeping into his voice, and found that he didn't really care.

Steve gestured with the radio. "You heard them."

"I heard them," Bruce agreed, "and they're handling it."

"Twenty minutes isn't handling it. We're closer." Steve held up the phone, but Bruce didn't look. "Next exit's in a quarter mile—turn off."

"This isn't aliens falling from the sky. This is just people. The locals are on it. We can't get involved." 

"We have to."

The headlights flashed off the reflective tape of the exit sign. Bruce's hand tightened on the wheel.

Steve reached for it. Bruce tried to hold it steady, but he was no match for Steve’s strength. Not at the moment, anyway. "You don't want to do that."

Bruce knew it it was his tone and not his grip that made Steve release the wheel and bring his hands back to his lap.

They rode through the darkness in silence broken by the occasional tense remark over the police band. Five minutes passed before the operator reported that the phone connection had gone dead. Updates, codes, check-ins, protocol blurred together until a clear, horrified "shit," broke in. "We're on the scene. We're too late."

Bruce reached over to the radio and switched it off.

It was dawn before Steve spoke again. Bruce kept his eyes on the road, trying to pretend to himself at least that he was too tired to let himself be distracted.

"How do you live with yourself?"

Bruce laughed. "Not a lot of choice."

"How— Why?"

Bruce considered pretending he didn’t understand the question, but there was no point. "Because we would only have made it worse."

"Doesn't sound like it could have been worse."

He laughed again. "That's definitely not true."

The answer seemed to surprise Steve. "You're not saying you would have—? Your control is better than that."

"Even if it were, I'm not the only one we have to worry about."

"What are you trying to say?"

"That we can't afford this kind of thing. If we went— it's too much of a risk."

"Of what? That Ross catches us? That he sends us back to that prison? That's a risk I'm willing to take. If you're not— maybe you were right. Maybe you shouldn't be with us."

Bruce huffed out a bitter breath. "You think he'd just send you to the Raft and leave you there to rot? You're worth more to him than that, and you don't want to be worth anything to a guy like Ross."

It was Steve's turn to laugh, the harsh sound wrong on his lips. "Tell me something I don't know."

"He can find a use for you whether you're willing or not. If not you, your blood."

"You think he’s trying to recreate the serum?"

Bruce nodded.

"Like you did?" There was a reprimand in Steve's voice, and it curdled Bruce's stomach.

He thought of explaining, of justifying himself and his own mistakes. But his bones ached at the idea of even trying, and couldn't muster the energy to care what Steve thought.

Steve must have noticed something in his expression, though, because when Bruce glanced over, Steve's eyebrows were up, and his eyes on Bruce spoke more of curiosity than of disgust. "So we don't get caught,” he offered. But nothing in his tone spoke of real caution—nothing in his face told Bruce that he understood why Bruce hadn’t let them help.

Bruce forced his attention back to the road before them. "Yeah, well. Easier said than done."

 

They drove all that day until they were both too exhausted to continue, and camped under the stars on soft earth covering rocky ground. The scent of warm pine brought a kind of calm to Bruce’s thoughts, and for once he slept soundly.

When he woke in the morning, Steve was gone. Bruce did his best to tamp down an initial burst of fear. He focused on the small tasks of making himself presentable and assembling breakfast, and by the time the coffee pot was perking over a low fire he heard quick hard footsteps, and Steve came barreling into view.

He was out of breath, and for a moment Bruce wondered what it took to get him into that state. But by his bearing, the exercise had done him good, and Bruce couldn’t find it in himself to question the absence.

 

Waking up alone became a habit wherever they stopped. Whether they slept in motels or campgrounds or parking lots, no matter how badly Bruce tossed and turned, Steve always managed to slip away before Bruce awoke.

For a while, after the spike of paranoia on that first morning, Bruce didn’t think much of it. But one morning he opened the paper to find an item buried deep in the local section about a robbery two towns back that had been foiled by a mysterious stranger, and Bruce’s skin came alive with fear. Frustration welled, an impotent rage that battered at the walls of his flesh and went nowhere. Just like any attempts to pull Steve back were going to.

Still, when Steve returned to their motel that morning, Bruce met him at the door. “How much sleep do you need, anyway?” At Steve’s frown, he added, “professional curiosity.”

Steve shrugged. “Not that much, I guess. Have I been waking you up?”

“No. Not me.” He pressed the paper into Steve’s hands. “You might want to do some reading. I’ll be back.”

Bruce wandered the town for most of the day, lingering in parks and diners and mulling over what to do. He could leave. He should leave, as always, but somehow he couldn't do it. He told himself that he was the only thing keeping Steve from getting himself thrown in the Raft, but if Steve was set on getting caught, Bruce probably ought to let him. At least that way Bruce wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire and make everything a thousand times worse.

The room was empty when Bruce finally returned, a little after dark. Bruce turned on the light beside one of the beds and settled into an easy chair. The newspaper lay on the side table, folded open to the article he’d found that morning. Bruce picked it up and read it again. A "good Samaritan" in the words of one of the witnesses, and Bruce recalled the phrase on Steve's lips after the wildfire.

The door opened, and Bruce caught just a glimpse of Steve's face before the door's motion halted abruptly. An instant later it swung open again. Steve flashed a sheepish smile at his hesitance before his eyes found Bruce's face and his expression resolved into steely defiance.

Bruce put the paper down and let out a long breath. He thought of telling Steve he was going to go. Thought of telling Steve what an idiot he was being. But instead, he said only "you want to get dinner?"

Relief washed over Steve's face—an expression that made him look every bit as young as he sort of was. "Yeah. Sounds good."

 

Bruce was almost relieved when they met up with the others in Cleveland, and all the more so when he and Sam set off by train over to Chicago on another aimless itinerary that would bring them to Cincinnati in time to meet Steve and Wanda again in another week and a half. The trip passed in a jumble of unobtrusive hotel rooms and diners and train cars, and then he traveled with Wanda again, for a time, before meeting up with the others once more.

So it went, as the weeks piled up, and Bruce might have begun to relax if it weren't for the news. It was never anything showy, no mention of Captain America, no all-points bulletins. But an unnamed good Samaritan kept showing up in the local pages of podunk newspapers—usually one man, sometimes two, or a man and a woman. Stepping in when the cops weren't around, helping out when some lone civilian had figured they were done for. Bruce tried to broach the subject while he traveled with Steve, but even though the urgency of their freedom burned in his belly, he couldn't bring himself to make Steve stop. So, he didn’t.


	4. Chapter 4

In a hotel outside of Youngstown, some time after the first frost, Bruce and Steve settled in to wait out the night before heading south, leaving Wanda and Sam to go west before meeting up again in the south of Kentucky. Steve hit the shower while Bruce made himself as comfortable as the lumpy beds would allow. 

He glanced through the paper he'd picked up a few towns back, and for once nothing in it hinted at Steve or any of them. Bruce tried to make himself believe that the whole thing wasn't that bad, that he saw a pattern in the news stories only because he knew it was there.

He set the paper aside and was vaguely looking around for the remote when he heard the faint buzz of a cell phone. He cast around and recognized Steve's pack as the source. He glanced at the bathroom door, beyond which the shower was still running. 

He fished through the pack and found the phone—one of the burners, like the ones Steve gave to Bruce and the others. The likelihood that something had come up that couldn't wait outweighed the trespass of answering Steve's phone, so Bruce flipped the thing open and held it to his ear.

"Steve, I don't know if your escapades are what passed for under the radar in 1943, but people are noticing. You've got about three hours to get out of there or—"

"Tony?" Bruce couldn't help but blurt out his name, any more than he could stop his pleasure at hearing Tony's voice, or the apprehension that followed as he realized all that they had to talk about.

Assuming, of course, that they actually talked. For the moment, the line was so quiet that Bruce wondered if the call had dropped.

"Bruce?" Tony finally managed. "You're— I looked for you."

"I, uh, was trying not be found. And then—" He didn't finish, didn't try to explain. It was too much for this connection. And besides, just then the water shut off, and he knew that Steve would be back in another minute. "It doesn't matter. You were saying?"

"Right, yeah, well, if you're with Steve—and you are, right, this is Steve's phone, I didn't just call a stupendously lucky wrong number—"

"I'm with Steve," Bruce confirmed.

"Okay then, the two of you had better be elsewhere nowish, because Ross has been taking notice of the whole good Samaritan routine, and he's pissed."

"How about you?"

"How about me what?"

"Are _you_ pissed? I mean, are you planning on tracking us down—"

"What? No. Why would I—” He stopped abruptly, and when he spoke again his voice ached with exhaustion. “Okay, I can see why recent events might have led Steve to the conclusion that I would, but there were circumstances that he did not understand at the time."

Bruce had no idea what to say into the silence that followed.

When Tony finally broke it, he spoke quietly. "Things went wrong—I'll be the first to admit it. And, look, a lot of things are my fault, and even Steve will testify to the fact that I've been admitting to that left and right, but this whole mess— I'm not wrong, Bruce."

"Then why are you with Ross?"

"He was the one, that was the deal. I didn't work it out—the United fucking Nations did, and I'm— I'm too old to act like I get to shoot down a hundred and seventeen countries when they come to me and say 'this is what the world decided.'"

Bruce tried to swallow his rising fear. If the world decided Ross was in charge, then Bruce was screwed. He was really, truly screwed. But that wasn't the point right now.

The bathroom door opened and Steve emerged, damp but clothed. “Who’s that?” He gestured toward the phone at Bruce's ear. 

“It's Tony. He says we’ve got to get out of here.”

“Was that Steve?” Tony asked. “Tell him—” There was a pause. “What you told him, I guess. Get the hell out of there, and keep your heads down.”

Bruce waited a beat after the line went dead before he could bring himself to snap the phone shut and hand it over to Steve.

Steve took it, slipped it back into his pack. “We’ve been spotted?” 

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Let's go. You get to a bus depot, head north. I'll warn Wanda and Sam. We can meet up in a couple of days in Nashville.”

It was the usual ballet, switching up partners and modes of transport. All apparently ineffective. “We should get out of the country, go someplace where Ross has fewer contacts. Really, this time.”

Steve nodded. “I know. But Nashville first. Then we’ll regroup and make a decision.”

“Yeah.” Bruce grabbed his gear and left. 

The bus station was a few miles off. Bruce tried to keep his pace casual—not slow, but not fast enough to look like he was running. He adjusted the brim of his baseball cap to shield his eyes against the sun and any security cameras he might be passing. He was halfway there when he heard the distinctive rhythm of a helicopter.

He forced himself not to look up. He kept walking, hands in his pockets and head down, just a guy down on his luck making his way across town. Nothing to see. 

The chopper blades grew louder. Anyone would look up at that, he told himself, and did. 

Fuck. It was military—serious, heavy-duty military, and no way was that thing looking for anybody but them. Bruce let himself stare, rounding his eyes as if in mild surprise instead of the grim fear he felt. The chopper was close enough that he could see one of the guys, and then it came—the moment he'd expected since he heard the first stir of the blades. The guy pointed, right at Bruce, and there was no way to mistake it for anything else.

Giving up all pretense, Bruce took off running as fast as his legs would take him. He made a sharp turn, then another, hoping—vainly, in all likelihood—to lose them behind the regrettably short buildings of the neighborhood.

He made another turn, this time into the parking lot of a grocery store. Not bad—he pelted in, shoving aside shopping carts and shoppers alike. There were too many people—not good—but he'd never lose the helicopter running in the streets. He shoved through the back doors, marked “Staff Only” and into a long hallway. Break room, closets, stairs. He briefly considered going down, but he would only end up trapped down there, and that could only end badly. Finally, the back exit. He stopped this time, listened at the door. No sound. He wondered if there would be an overhang, or if he'd be visible from the sky the minute he stepped outside. 

Only one way to find out.

He opened the door, just wide enough to slip through. It looked good—a loading bay, shielded from sun and rain, plenty of trucks cutting off the line of sight in most directions. He started walking, fast but quiet, trying to take advantage of the brief respite to come up with anything that could buy him more than another couple of minutes. 

As he passed a milk truck, someone grabbed him from behind, yanked him around. Strong hands hauled him up into the cab. Bruce shut his eyes and tried to breathe, willing himself to hold back the welling panic that could only end in ugly death for whoever had taken him, and more civilians than Bruce could stand to think of.

“No need for the Other Guy to make an appearance, Bruce, it’s me.”

Natasha. His body flooded with a giddy relief, followed immediately by a cold wash of apprehension. He opened his eyes. 

She she kept her gaze ahead as she guided the truck out of the lot and onto the street—paying more attention than strictly necessary. “Unless that’s reason enough,” she continued. Bruce recognized the tone—a wry joke guarding the fear underneath.

“No.” It did hurt, though, to look at her. To think of the last time he saw her. He lacked the words to express it, even in his own head. He didn't try to explain. 

He could still hear the helicopters, but the sound grew softer as they drove. Apparently, amid all the trucks, Ross’s men hadn’t picked this one out. “Steve and the others were going to head north,” he finally managed, and only then wondered if he could trust her. 

“We got them.”

“Oh.” He watched the buildings out the window, the spaces between them growing wider as they headed out of town, and tried not to wonder whether that was a good thing. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“Mostly Tony. I think Rhodey’s with him.”

“How is Rhodes? I heard—”

“Sounds like he’s recovering. The adaptive tech Tony got him into is pretty good. But I haven’t seen him since—” She let out a long breath. “I’m not exactly welcome in the Compound just now.”

“And where are we going?”

She laughed. "The Compound."

Bruce swallowed. "I thought— I don't think that's a good idea."

"Yeah, well, running around with Steve playing traveling good Samaritan wasn't a great idea either. And now Ross has their pictures everywhere and apparently it's getting a little hard for Tony not to come get their asses, so—"

"But not mine?"

"No. We didn't know you were with them until just now. We didn't know— I didn't know where you were." She shifted to look at him. "Which was the goal, right?”

"Yeah."

She gave a tight nod at that, and turned back to the road ahead. "Anyway, the Compound is about the only place Ross isn't looking at this point, and he's looking hard. You guys were making him look bad, and he can't afford that."

"And you care because?" It was childish, but he couldn’t help himself.

Her breath hissed out, but when she spoke it was as if she were addressing a particularly slow child. “Because Ross is a sonofabitch when his back's against the wall, and I don't want to see any of you back at the Raft."

"This is all just— you'll forgive me for being a little confused. You're taking us back to the Avengers Compound, which Ross controls—"

"He doesn't. He gives the orders for the UN, but it isn't like that. Tony only follows about half of them anyway, after everything." She laughed again, bitter this time. "It's complicated."

"Yeah, so I'm told." He raked one hand through his hair. "Is this safe?"

"Depends on your definition."

"Natasha, I need to know. Am I walking back into a trap? Because if Ross's guys show up and try to take me back to the Raft, the Other Guy isn't going to let them, and that's—"

"Not going to work out for everyone," she finished for him. "I know, and they're not. Tony's messed with the compound's security, promises it'll be safe for the four of you to sort things out and find someplace to go. Or—"

"Or?"

"Tony thinks he can work something out. Get everybody back on the team again."

"Under Ross." Bruce laughs, nausea warring with actual hysteria. “You should probably just let me out here.”

"I know Ross is an idiot. I know he reacted badly after the incident, went after you in the worst way, but it's different now—"

"Reacted badly? Is that what he did?" Bruce turned to his window and forced himself to concentrate on the passing scenery and the slow, deliberate rhythm of his breath.

"I'm not trying to minimize what he did. I know it was rough for you, being on the run."

"Being on the run.... Natasha, being on the run is the least of my problems. It is _rough_ for me being the fucking Hulk. It was _rough_ being turned into the Hulk in the experiment that _he_ engineered. And it's going to be a hell of a lot rougher if he and I are ever in the same room again, because—" He felt his blood rising, noticed the off-tempo beat of his heart and the welling taste of adrenaline in his mouth. He looked back to find her watching him, the truck slowed to a crawl and her face dead white. 

She was scared shitless, and after everything she damn well should be.

He caught himself, closed his eyes. He forced his attention back to his breathing, back to acting like the kind of civilized human being that he'd only ever wished he were. The discipline of it returned to him, and he stayed that way, only barely noticing the acceleration as the truck returned to its original speed. He had no idea how much time passed that way before she spoke again.

"I need to ask some questions," she told him quietly. "If I do it now, are we going to be okay?"

He didn’t open his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Ross was responsible for your accident.”

“That isn’t a question,” he told her. Then he shook his head. This wasn’t the time for games. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He heard the hysteria creeping back into his voice. “He wanted a weapon.” There—that sounded calmer. “He wanted the Other Guy. He just wanted him under control. That’s still what he wants. He tried, with the Abomination, but apparently that didn't work out either. But he's the 'try, try again' type."

"You think he's still experimenting?"

"Can't think of another reason he'd risk a blood draw when he had me at the Raft.”

Natasha frowned. “Was he trying to recreate your incident or get the Other Guy under control?”

“Damned if I know. It doesn't matter.”

She tried to object to that, but he cut her off before she could manage it.

“It doesn’t matter because I can't let him do either. So I'm serious, Natasha.” He opened his eyes, looked at her. “I have to go."

"Hear Tony out, okay? It's getting harder to disappear—"

"Yeah, I noticed that."

"And you could use people who have your back."

He let out a breath and watched her face for a long moment. "Yeah, I could," he agreed. “You know where I could find some?”

She kept her face forward, didn't respond. But he could see from the tension in her shoulders that she knew what he meant. He watched as she drew in a long breath and let it out, then another.

"I always had your back, Bruce. Since Kolkata, I always had your back."

"Not in Sokovia."

“In Sokovia, I needed to get you off your ass to save the damn world.” The words came out fast—without her usual careful curation. But then she pulled herself back, a little. “And it worked, and I don't have a single regret."

"Not one? Do you know how many people the Other Guy crushed under the rubble?"

"No.” He did catch a note of regret then, but it didn’t last long. “Do you know how close we came to losing?"

He started to answer, but she cut him off before he could.

"No. You don't. Because you took off in the middle of everything. But it was too close, Bruce. It was too close to game over, annihilation of the world, so no, I don't have an apology for you." She stopped, her lips pressed together in a hard line before they finally parted. "Would it matter if I did?"

It was an interesting question. He didn't know the answer.

They lapsed into silence again, this time for twenty, thirty, fourty miles. He watched the highway signs pass and tried to think about what it would mean to be on a team again, one that had a mission beyond staying alive and out of trouble.

It would mean being a weapon again. Someone else's weapon. Even if it weren't Ross—even when it had been Natasha pulling his trigger, he couldn't stand the consequences.

He toyed with the idea that she might have been right, on that ledge in Sokovia. Might have been right to shove him off and make him a monster. But even if she had been, she wouldn't be the one in charge of a new team, and he sure as hell couldn't trust that Ross would be pointing him in the right direction.

A hundred miles or so on, he finally spoke again. "If I go to the Compound, do I have your word I can walk out again?"

"You have my word."

He thought about that. And then thought about whether he had any other options anyway. "Okay then."


	5. Chapter 5

Bruce wasn't sure what he'd expected the Avengers Compound to look like, but he hadn't imagined it as a corporate park attached to a very swanky dormitory. 

The common room was empty when Bruce and Natasha got there. He settled tentatively into a couch, surveying the room for any hints of the people who used it these days. He didn't see many—it was impersonally decorated, with a kitchen too clean to have seen much use. 

Natasha didn’t sit. She checked the time. “Tony knows we’re here. He should be here soon.”

Bruce nodded, fingers and thumb drumming on the side of the couch. Natasha gestured toward the door with her chin. “I’m going to go find him.”

Bruce nodded again, and watched her go. He stood again, walking from one side of the room to the other, for no reason other than to stretch his legs after the long drive. He'd made a couple of laps of the room when the door slid open and the Vision walked in.

Bruce couldn't help but stare. He'd met Vision before, of course. Had _made_ Vision, in a manner of speaking. But only a few short hours later Bruce had left, and amidst everything else he'd given little thought to where Vision would go, or what he would do, after everything with Ultron was over.

"Dr. Banner."

"Hi. It's— they call you Vision."

"They do."

Bruce looked him up and down. "It suits you."

"That means a great deal to me. As does your presence."

Bruce didn't have the faintest idea what to say to that. He suddenly felt that he'd been cast as a deadbeat dad, a role he'd once feared he was destined for, but thought he'd definitively escaped. "It's, uh, good to see you."

"I have made you uncomfortable."

"No. Well, yes. But it’s not your fault."

"I meant only that I am eager to see a reunification of the team, and I anticipate that your presence might be advantageous."

"My presence?" Bruce laughed. "I don't know what you were expecting, but I'm not exactly a negotiator."

"You were absent for the recent... unpleasantness. And I had hoped that you might have some sympathies with both positions in the matter."

"Even if I do, it doesn't matter. I came because— I don't know why I came. But I'll be leaving again soon."

Vision looked down. "I see." He paused, and then looked up again, a smile painted on his face. "Well, I am pleased to have seen you."

"Thank you. You, uh, too."

The door slid open again. Tony walked in, backwards, gesticulating to Natasha and Rhodes. Behind them, Steve, Sam, and Wanda entered, all close together, all guarded.

"Ross thinks so,” Tony was saying. “But I've got an algorithm feeding him data on the place—video, access card useage, heat sensors,satellite images, the whole shebang. He gets nothing out of the ordinary, no matter what happens here."

Natasha frowned. "And you really think he hasn't got any human surveillance?"

Tony scoffed. "A, he doesn't really have the budget. B, we do sweeps. I've got some bots set up, occasionally I go out myself. Or Rhodey does." He gave Vision a clap on the arm. "Or this guy. And he's pretty damn observant, if I do say so myself."

Vision raised an eyebrow—not a natural expression on his face, but one that suited him anyway. "I remain unsure of the significance of your 'say so,' Tony." Bruce wasn't sure, but he thought it was a joke. 

"Still freaks me out that he calls me that. No offense, buddy, I've just got this whole voice memory thing going on."

"It is understandable. However, I believe we have more pressing subjects for discussion?"

“Yes, right. We do.” Tony looked around. “Everybody accounted for?”

“You tell us,” Steve said. “You're the one who brought us here.”

“And you're welcome for that.” Tony gestured at the room. “Accommodations here are much better than where you were headed.”

“We could have—”

“Gotten your asses caught, which is what you were about to do. But that's not the point.” Tony paused. “No, that _is_ the point, because you guys are terrible at being fugitives. Seriously, you had Natasha backing you up and you still got caught, I don't know how that's even possible. You shouldn't be on the run.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah? Try telling Ross that.”

“I did. And he listened. I got you a deal. You come back, all’s forgiven.”

Bruce could see the frustration on Steve’s face, but it was Sam who answered. “All’s forgiven? So we get a _pardon_ for helping an innocent guy keep his skin? For trying to deal with the real threat instead of papering it over.” He huffed out a breath. “Typical.”

“As I recall, the ‘real threat’ was a psycho who just wanted us to duke it out. Which we did.” Tony’s voice darkened into something like real animus before he seemed to shrug it off. “But that’s neither here nor there.”

“You’re right about that, at least. Tony, we’re not asking to be let back into the clubhouse.” Sam placed a hand on the bar, and for an instant his face relaxed into something almost fond. “Not saying I don’t miss this place, but—”

“But we can’t be forgiven when we didn’t do anything wrong,” Steve finished. “And we can’t work for someone who still thinks we did.”

“One hundred and seventeen.” Tony grabbed a thick stack of paper off a shelf and tossed it onto the counter, where it landed with a thud. “One hundred and seventeen countries said these are the rules of the road. They said Ross is in charge now. What do you want me to do?”

Bruce’s skin felt tight, and his throat filled with all the things he wanted to say. But no single answer won out, and instead Steve spoke quietly into the silence.

“Say ‘no.’ When you need to.”

“And I will.” The words spilled out of Tony’s mouth, too fast and too harsh. He visibly pulled himself back. “When I need to, I will. Look, I know you missed the Nuremberg trials, but we’re pretty clear on the limits of the chain of command nowadays. Ross tells me to commit a war crime, you better believe I'm going to tell him to go screw. But he hasn't yet.”

“He has other people for that.” Wanda’s voice was quiet, but it cut through the room. 

Tony’s gaze shifted to her, then fell. 

“You saw what he did to me,” Wanda continued. “You saw and then you left.”

“I had someplace to be.” He nodded in Steve's direction. “Didn't really go our way, but—” He shrugged, still studying the carpet. 

“And after that was done, you sat here, in luxury. While we were still there.”

“I did what I could do. Got you that helicopter—”

“Excuse me?” Steve broke in.

“Did you seriously think it would be that easy to steal a nine million dollar piece of equipment?”

Steve huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh, but his expression remained dark.

“Anyway, point is, Steve had it covered. I wasn’t going to let you rot there. But I can’t help you now if you don’t let me.” Tony turned and paced away, then back towards them, where he stood, still shifting restlessly as he surveyed the room. 

“This was a good team,” Rhodey finally spoke into the silence. “It could be good again.”

“It already is,” Steve told him, his voice almost warm. “But I can't be on it.”

Tony opened his mouth to object, but Steve shook his head. 

“I won't make a promise I can't keep.”

Tony huffed out what might have been a laugh. “Unlike me, you mean.”

“You always want to start a fight, don't you, Tony?”

“I actually don't. But it always seems to go that way, doesn't it?” Tony reached out and clasped Steve's hand, but didn’t meet his gaze as he mumbled “you'll be missed.” He released Steve and stepped back, leaning against the bar in a more relaxed posture than the drumming of his fingers suggested. “How about the rest of you? Your little bird is back in commission,” he offered, looking in Sam’s direction. 

“Thanks. I'll take it with.”

Tony nodded at that and stuck out a hand to Sam as well. Sam looked at it doubtfully before giving it a brief shake. 

Tony looked around. “Anybody? This is a good deal.”

Wanda shook her head, and Bruce did the same, swallowing down his own regret.

“I'm in.” Natasha stood, brushing probably-imaginary dust off her thighs. “If the offer’s open to me.”

Tony looked surprised by that, then almost pathetically pleased. “Of course.”

To Bruce, it felt like one more punch to the gut. That Natasha would stay, knowing everything— Bruce turned on his heel and left, pushing through the door and striding down the hall with no destination in mind.

He found himself outside, on the border between great expanses of grass and gravel. He sat on the grass in the shade and stared into the middle distance, trying to let the pain wash through him and leave him empty.

When he finally heard footsteps crunching over the gravel, he kept his eyes on his hands and his focus on his breath. The crunching stopped.

“Keep your enemies close. It's the first thing they teach you. The first thing I remember, anyway.”

He looked up. Natasha stood over him, framed by the sun. The brilliance around her dazzled his eyes and turned her to a silhouette, her face unreadable. 

“Which enemy?”

“You know which. If Tony’s going to be following orders, he needs someone around who's less—” she shrugged. “Less tired. Better able to keep tabs on what Ross is up to.”

Bruce looked down at his hands, unable to keep his gaze on the blaze of light around her. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“What do you want me to say? Do what you’re gonna do. You don't need my permission.”

“No,” she agreed. Gravel crunched softly as she shifted from one foot to the other. Stillness for another moment, and then he listened as she walked away.   
Bruce watched the shadows lengthen before fading into the even gray of dusk, his mind flitting uselessly from apprehension to regret and back again. 

“So this is where you are hiding yourself.” 

He startled, his heart suddenly tight in his chest even though, in his mind, he knew no threat existed. Amid the rest of his turmoil her presence hadn't registered, and he hadn't heard her approach over the soft grass. Being caught off guard always threw him, all the more so with her. 

“If I were hiding I’d have been harder to find.”

She ignored that. “You haven't told him.”

“I haven't told who what?”

“Don’t play stupid.”

He hadn't been—not really—but he hadn't been trying that hard to follow her either.

“Tony would not be following Ross still if you had told him.”

“About Ross.” It was almost a question.

“Yes, about Ross. What he did to you. And to me.”

“He didn’t make you what you are. You chose that.”

He still didn’t look up at her, but he could hear the discomfort in the shifting gravel beneath her feet. “I did. But he would chose it for others. He has my blood. Do you think he will be more cautious with it than he was with your serum? More patient?”

Bruce laughed. Shook his head.

“Then why haven’t you told Tony?”

He thought about that. The best answer he had was that it hadn’t come up. When he’d been with the Avengers, Ross had seemed like a memory, and not one he wanted to dwell on. And now—he could say he hadn’t had the time. There’d been one phone call and one conversation, and neither had seemed like the place. But the lump forming in the pit of his stomach told him that that hadn’t been the real reason. Tony was a friend, but more than that, Tony _got_ Bruce, respected his theories, worked with him without fear. But when Bruce asked why he was with Ross, Tony’s voice had ached with exhaustion and given no hint that he was ready to buck the UN’s decision for anything. Maybe Bruce’s story could change his mind. But if it didn’t—Bruce wasn’t ready to face that.

He looked up at Wanda again, and it occurred to him that he’d gone a long time without speaking. “I don’t know,” he lied. “Why haven’t you?”

She laughed, then. “Tony does not trust me. I don’t trust him either, so—” she shrugged. “It’s only fair.”

“You may be overestimating our relationship.”

“No. I’ve seen what you accomplished together. Your Vision is magnificent. That could not be done without trust.”

Bruce considered it. “It might not make any difference.”

“But you will try.” He could hear satisfaction in her voice. It suited her.

“Yeah. I’ll try.”

 

He found Tony in the workshop. For a moment, Bruce let himself stand there and watch as Tony maneuvered the blaze of a welding torch along the seam of some equipment or other. 

It felt good to watch him work—familiar. The time they had fought together, when the Avengers were still the Avengers Bruce had known, didn’t last long, but somehow the period had expanded in his mind to feel like more. Like it was his baseline state instead of a brief interlude in the endless flight that made up his life. Even so, the habit of it slipped back on as if he'd never lost it, and so he waited, and watched, until Tony raised the welding mask and looked his way.

"Hey, Bruce, hi. How's—" He stood, crossed the shop with a little of the old lightness that Bruce remembered. When he looked Bruce up and down, his face fell almost comically fast, leaving Bruce to wonder just how grim his own expression was. "What's up, buddy?"

"You can't work for Ross." He forced it out—unequivocal, unyielding, before he could lose his nerve.

"Okay," Tony began, drawing the word out as if to buy himself time. "What's this coming from? Why now?"

"Why now? Why—" Bruce threw his head back and laughed. It was the only thing he could do to let out a little of the pressure in his veins, keep his skin from growing far too tight. But it only worked for a moment, and when he looked at Tony again his face had shifted to an almost cold caution—like he was running the numbers on just how fast he could get his suit on. Bruce made an effort. "It's a little hard to have a conversation on the run. Harder to have one when you're in solitary confinement." He shook his head, turned away and paced off to one side of the shop. Pulled his words together, turned back, and tried. "Thaddeus Ross has been trying to make the perfect soldier for decades, and in his book, the perfect soldier is perfectly biddable and infinitely powerful. Answerable to him alone. Apparently that’s what he was hoping for when he screwed with the serum I was testing. But the Other Guy wasn’t that. Even Blonsky wasn't what he was looking for. But he'll keep trying until he gets what he wants. I don't know if he wants you to be his soldier or if the Accords are just to get him access to better research subjects, but it doesn't matter. The UN may have picked him, but he isn't going to listen to them." Bruce cut himself off. Looked down at his hands. Looked up again. "You want somebody you can trust to make the calls for you. I get that. I do. He isn't the guy."

And then he waited. 

Tony took a couple more steps towards Bruce, his face almost blank. He shoved the welding torch onto a bench where it landed with an awkward clank. Bruce waited, unable to read anything in Tony's expression.

Until it cracked, and his face turned to a mask of rage. "The hell, Bruce? What the actual fuck?"

Bruce didn't have a response, and apparently didn't need one.

"You're telling me this now?"

Bruce tried to object, but still Tony didn't pause.

"No, don't give me that 'I didn't have a chance,' bullshit. We worked together for six months, and it never occurred to you to mention that, 'oh, by the way, my experiment wasn't some kind of fluke, it was some asshole messing with my experiment,'? You didn't think that was helpful fucking information?"

“It wasn’t.” Bruce felt his own rage surge up in his blood to match Tony’s. To exceed it. "It wasn't your goddamned business."

"Well it's my business now, isn't it?"

"And I'm telling you now."

Tony tore off the welding mask and threw it on the bench. His gloves followed, and he dusted off his now-bare hands. Bruce wondered for a minute whether he was planning to throw a punch, but all he said was "okay."

Bruce's mounting fury ran into the simple acknowledgement like it was a brick wall. "Okay?"

"Okay. Fine." Tony gestured vaguely. "Bygones, and so on. Now we deal with it."

Bruce felt as if the conversation had made a sharp turn, and left him heading in the wrong direction. "We deal with—?"

"Ditching Ross. Look, I could put up with him when I thought—" Tony stopped, and peered into Bruce's face. "You thought I was going to tell you to fuck off?"

Bruce shrugged, uncertain of answer even if he'd been inclined to share it.

"Well fuck you too, buddy." He clasped Bruce on the shoulder, but in contrast to the gesture, his words carried real heat. "Let's go take care of business."


	6. Chapter 6

Bruce initially half expected Tony to suit up and go after Ross himself, but instead he called out to— actually, Bruce realized he didn't know who Tony was talking to, now that Jarvis was gone. "Friday, get everybody together." Tony strode out of the room, pausing only briefly as he seemed to realize that Bruce hadn't moved yet. "C'mon."

Bruce allowed himself a small smile, and followed, an oddly giddy sense of hope suddenly bouying his steps. 

They found Natasha standing at a window one hall down from the workshop. She fell into step with them, making no pretense that she'd been doing anything but waiting for them to emerge.

"All staff meeting?" she asked. 

"Turns out Ross has to go. So— we're gonna need a plan."

"And you just decided this because—?" But the look she shot Bruce suggested she already knew.

"Bruce decided. I'm just carrying out orders. Right, Banner?"

"Not exactly how I'd put it."

"Sounded a lot like an order to me. In any case—" Tony pushed through the door to the common room, where Steve and Sam were already in some kind of conversation with Wanda and Rhodes, while Vision stood to the side with his usual odd air of diffidence. "Okay, folks, new plan. Ross is out—he doesn't know it yet, but that's small potatoes, we'll figure that out later. UN's going to have to send somebody else to give us orders, and then we'll see what happens. Questions, comments?"

Wanda fixed on him with cold eyes. “What took you so long?”

Tony looked away for an instant, but when he raised his head the shame on his face disappeared. “Didn't have all the info,” he told her, his voice tight. “Any useful questions? Better yet, ideas—Ross isn't stepping away without a fight.”

“So tell the UN,” Steve said. “You don’t want to work for Ross, make ‘em send someone else.”

Natasha shook her head. “It’s not going to be that easy. Ross won over a lot of the people who matter.”

“And you better believe he’ll be whispering in their ears that he’s the only one who can keep us in line,” Sam agreed. “Keep you in line, anyway.”

“Who cares what he is whispering?” Wanda asked. “He cannot make you follow his orders, whatever the United Nations says.”

“And we should do what, kick his ass?” Rhodes asked. “You guys tried that before, didn’t work out so well.”

“If it’s all of us together—” Steve began, but Natasha cut him off.

“We have to do it the legal way. What’s the other option? Go back on the run? Or did you want us to proclaim ourselves kings of the world?”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

Natasha’s gaze swept over all of them. “We have to do this the legal way,” she said again. “Show that we’ll listen to the UN, but only if it plays by its own rules.”

“What if Ross hasn’t broken any rules?” Sam asked.

Wanda looked at him in disgust. “Locking us up wasn’t enough—”

“Don’t forget, we’re ‘criminals.’”

Wanda gestured at Bruce. “What was his crime?”

Bruce laughed. “I’m sure Ross came up with something. It wouldn’t have been hard.” He sobered. “But the only orders Ross takes seriously are the ones he gives himself. The UN can’t have authorized everything he’s up to.”

Vision coughed a little, as if to request the attention of the room. “Section 43 subpart E paragraph vi forbids any knowing use of the tissue or bodily fluids of any enhanced individual in any research effort which does not comply with the provisions of—”

“Summarize.” Tony sounded as if he were talking to JARVIS, and it occurred to Bruce that in that instant he probably thought he was.

Vision didn’t object. “Experimentation using samples from enhanced individuals is permitted only for the purposes of attempting to control their enhancements.” He turned to face Bruce directly. “If you are correct that Secretary Ross is continuing in his attempts to create ‘the perfect soldier,’—”

Bruce could still feel those words on his lips, but Vision hadn’t been there when he said them. “How do you know about that?”

“Forgive me.” Vision did look genuinely abashed. “I understand that privacy is of value, but my hearing significantly exceeds that of a human. It is my custom to attempt to ignore whatever I should not have heard, but under the circumstances—”

“Yeah, okay. Forget it.”

“The point is, that kind of experimentation should be enough for the UN.” Natasha placed a hand on Bruce’s shoulder, and for the moment Bruce gave into the temptation to leave it there. 

“So, what, we walk into a Security Council meeting?” Steve asked. “I don’t remember them being too interested in hearing from us.”

“Maybe if you had—” Natasha cut herself off, and shook her head. “We lay the groundwork. I think T’Challa will take my call. We explain it to him, and he can take our arguments to the Council for us.”

Steve didn’t relax his posture one iota, but even so everyone else seemed to calm when he gave a stiff nod. It was strange, Bruce reflected, that no matter what else had happened, they all still looked to him as a leader.

The fact didn’t seem to have escaped Tony’s notice, because his expression darkened, but he quickly schooled it back into a hard neutrality. “Okay then,” he told Natasha. “Make your call.”

She turned to Bruce and beckoned him to follow. Without a word, he did.

Natasha settled herself into one of the conference room seats and tapped a quick pattern on tablet. Surprisingly quickly, T’Challa’s face appeared on screen. 

“Ms. Romanoff.”

“Your Majesty.” The honorific sounded odd on her lips, tinged with a kind of wry respect. “Thanks for answering. I wasn’t sure we were still on speaking terms.”

“What you did— it was for the best, in the end.” He flexed one shoulder and allowed an exaggerated wince. “Painful, but for the best.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” It was less apology than flirtation, Bruce noted.

“How may I be of assistance?” T’Challa’s tone remained warm, but with none of the humility his words implied. 

“Bruce has something you need to hear.”

“Dr. Banner. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.” He sounded less pleased than distracted, his attention elsewhere. “What did you want to tell me?”

Bruce could appreciate a man who got to the point. “Secretary Ross is doing experiments. He’s got a long history of trying for a supersoldier. I understand that’s against the law these days.”

“Section 43(E),” Natasha clarified. “Ross is in violation.”

That seemed to get T’Challa’s attention. “That is a serious matter. What evidence do you have?”

“He had me confined, tried to draw my blood.”

“Tried. He did not succeed?” T’Challa asked with a slightly arch tone that suggested he knew why. But the slight smile soon vanished. “Such an attempt—it is not much as evidence goes.”

“He took blood from Wanda Maximoff as well.”

“While she was lawfully held for interfering with an arrest under the Accords.” 

“There was no medical reason for it.”

“And you have no proof as to what he did with it?”

Bruce shook his head.

“Nor any proof that it even happened, apart from Ms. Maximoff’s word?”

“No.” Bruce stood, ran a hand through his hair, inwardly laughing at himself for ever believing this could work.

But Natasha’s face still wore a mask of determination. “Ross is responsible for Bruce’s accident too. He has a history—”

“From before the Accords.”

“There is every reason to believe that he’s still—”

“Ms. Romanoff, I do not disbelieve you. But my influence is limited. If this is all you have, I cannot help you.”

Bruce found his hand tightening too much on the chair beside him, and glanced up to see that Natasha had noticed, was staring wordlessly at his white knuckles. But in an instant she tore her gaze away and smiled at the screen with real warmth. “Thanks for hearing us out.”

T’Challa gave a quick nod, and the screen went blank. Bruce kept his eyes on it anyway, not quite ready to turn back and face Natasha. His muscles clenched too tight, his nerves readying him to do something—anything—to vent his frustration. But the only one he had to blame was himself. “This was a bad idea.” He looked up and met Natasha’s eyes. “I need to go.”

“All we need is proof, and we can get it.”

“Yeah? How?”

“I haven't gotten that far yet. But in that room,” she inclined her head toward the door, “are six of the most powerful people in the world. All of us together, you really think we can't take down an asshole on a power trip?”

Bruce shook his head. “It isn’t that simple.”

“That's never stopped us before.” She tapped the com on the table. “T’Challa was a bust. We have some planning to do.”

The door opened immediately, and the others filed in. Bruce leaned back against the wall and watched as they settled in. In spite of himself, he found himself admiring their resolution. Tony looked less tired, Steve less pissed, Wanda and Sam less guarded than they had just a few hours ago. The situation wasn't any better, but somehow a new confidence filled the space between them. At least in this, they had a common goal, and that made them feel like a team again. Bruce knew better than to share the sentiment, but he couldn’t help but like that it was there.

When they'd all settled themselves, Natasha put her forearms on the table in front of her, fingers laced together. "We're going to need more than we have to nail Ross to the wall.”

“We know Ross is running the experiments—” Wanda began.

“We believe that he is,” Vision corrected.

Bruce shook his head. “I know Ross. I know what he’s doing.”

Natasha gave a tight nod. “So now we just need proof.”

“Already struck out on his servers.” Tony stood and paced to the other end of the room as he spoke. “He’s not an idiot—he doesn’t keep anything interesting anywhere with an internet connection.”

“What he has will be at the Raft. My blood.” Wanda rubbed one arm, and Bruce wondered if she knew she was doing it. “And the blood of anyone else he got his hands on. It will be there.”

“But we can’t exactly waltz in,” Steve said. “I assume he’s upped security since we got in the last time.”

“You're not wrong there.” Tony flicked his fingers in the direction of a screen and it lit up with schematics. “More guards, more guns, more vibranium reinforcements on the doors. And walls. And floors.”

Natasha’s eyes skimmed over the images and she gave a low whistle.

Sam stepped behind her and took a long look. “Yeah. We are not getting in there without a fight.”

Tony shrugged. “So we fight. The seven of us, you really think they can keep us out?”

“Maybe not,” Natasha agreed, “but they can torch the evidence we need before we get to it.”

“Not necessarily. He won’t know what we’re there for.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rhodes broke in, his face grim. “We can’t afford a fight like that.”

Sam nodded. "It’s really not the look we want in public if we're going to get somebody better than Ross to replace him."

The conversation lapsed into silence, until finally Wanda broke in. "Getting into a prison is not hard. We've already done it once."

"No." Tony shook his head. "Not an option."

Steve nodded. "There's no guarantee we could get out again." 

“There is.” Wanda gestured at Bruce. “He’s sitting right there.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows. “You think I was sticking around for fun?”

“By your choice. The Hulk could have made short work of your cage and you know it.”

“And I also know that he doesn’t like prisons, and when he doesn’t like the situation he’s in, things get real ugly real fast. The Raft isn’t Chitauri, it’s not Hydra. It’s mostly kids who don’t know what’s going on and don’t ask a lot of questions. You wanna set the Other Guy on them?”

“You should give him more credit,” Wanda said quietly.

“Says the one who riled him up and set him loose on Johannesburg.”

Silence fell, as all eyes turned back to the schematics on screen.

Steve finally let out a sigh and turned to Tony. “Can you make some kind of drone or something?"

Tony shook his head. "The place is too well designed. I’ve got some pretty small bugs, but nothing small enough. The Raft is underwater most of the time, and even when it isn't, it's got an airtight seal everywhere but the doors and the air pump. Those have monitors that raise an alarm if anything bigger than a handful of molecules slips in. I can't get anything in that's big enough to do us any good."

"And there's nothing online?" Natasha asked.

"Not a damn thing. I've had Friday on it for weeks, just for kicks at first, but she's got nothing."

Bruce let out a long breath and allowed himself to slump against the wall. "Look, maybe we just can't get it done. I'll get out of here, go someplace where Ross can't find me. You'll make do. Just make sure you know what he's asking you to do before you do it."

“The hell we will." Tony hadn't stopped pacing back and forth across the room, nor did he now. "You said it—we can't work for Ross. We're not going to give up because it got hard."

"What about a device which could operate from outside the Raft?" Vision asked. "Something which could access the internal systems if in close proximity?"

Tony pointed out a couple of lines of the specs. "The shielding’s too good. And anyway, even if I could get a signal through, the systems inside are probably shielded against anything with the kind of range we need."

Sam frowned. "What if we’re not trying for a computer?" He turned to Wanda. "What if we get you close, on a sub or something. Could you—"

She blanched, suddenly paper-white. "Could I take over their minds?" She studied her hands. "Yes, probably. But they would know it."

"And that's not going to win us any points with the UN when they find out," Natasha concluded.

Wanda nodded.

Silence fell again, and this time it stretched out for long enough that Bruce could feel the lump in his stomach turn to a hard, cold knot.

"Hypothetically," Sam finally hazarded, "if we did get ourselves arrested again. What could we do with that?"

Vision gestured at the display. "If we were able to get a mobile transmitter into the Raft, it could project data out to a receiver placed nearby."

"And it could be mobile," Tony added. "I haven’t got anything small enough to go through the front door, but there’s a couple of drones small enough to move around unobserved once they’re in."

Natasha nodded. "Just a camera and a transmitter—it could be small enough to look like an insect if nobody's looking too closely."

"So, what, we fly it around, look for anything incriminating?" Sam asked. "What are the odds we'd find it before the bug gets swatted?"

"It would help if it had something to follow," Natasha agreed.

"Like a blood sample," Bruce murmured, not sure if he wanted to speak loud enough to be heard.

Natasha nodded, her face grim. "It could work."

"And what then?" Rhodes asked. "Whoever went in just sits tight until the rest of us get the proof to the UN?"

"I've heard worse plans,” Tony admitted.

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve heard better. Even if it works and we get the proof, we’ve got no guarantee that the UN will do the right thing.”

No one had an answer to that.

"Okay," Tony said finally. "Back to the drawing board." A stylus in his hand flicked against the table at a frantic tempo that made Bruce's skin tighten.

Natasha stood. "So we'll think some more. In the meantime, is there anything to eat in this place? I haven't—"

A sudden noise split the air, followed immediately by the calm voice of Tony's latest AI. "Perimeter breach imminent."

The stylus fell from Tony's fingers. "Details,” he demanded.

"Secretary Ross and a contingent of forty-five soldiers are approaching from the southwest, and helicopters have approached from the north, northeast, east-southeast, and west."

Bruce felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. His chest tightened, crushing his lungs and cutting off all the air, and he barely heard the voices of the others until Steve's hands hit the table with a rough smack as he leaned across toward Tony with menace in every muscle. "What's going on?"

"Beats me. Maybe Ross noticed—" Tony met Steve’s eyes and stopped cold. Then he shook his head. "No way. I don't know. Look, the guy's a paranoid asshole, maybe he's checking in."

"Or maybe the offer to join the team was a trap all along, and the only question is whether you knew it."

Bruce was surprised by the raw fury on Steve's face, and the way Tony's expression settled into a mask of indifference that Bruce knew was anything but. Everyone had said that things had gotten bad—genuinely bad—between the two of them, but Bruce hadn't quite believed it until now.

"Fuck you too Cap." No affection to the words this time. Tony pushed back from the table and stood. "ETA?" he asked the air.

"Twenty-five minutes."

"Okay, what are our options?" Sam asked.

"We can hide you," Tony offered. "There's more sub-basements to this place than Ross knows about, and enough compartments inside them—"

"You also thought Ross couldn't find us here," Bruce pointed out. "How do we know this will be any better?"

"The building design has been altered significantly since the version of the blueprint to which Secretary Ross has access," Vision said. "Tony is correct to say that you could be hidden there with a high probability of success."

Natasha shook her head. "There's a better option. Join up. Tony said that the offer was open—"

"If it was ever a real offer to start with," Sam objected.

"It was." Tony's voice was strained, but certain. "I got video, and we can record whatever happens when Ross shows up. Ross can't back out of it if we play it right."

"And then what?" Wanda asked. "I will not fight on the orders of such a man."

"We live to fight another day. It buys us time to figure something out, something better."

"And what if there isn't a better way?" Steve asked.

"Then—"

"Get me the bug." Bruce's voice sounded eerily calm to his own ears, but it cut across the room anyway. 

"What?" The concern in Wanda's voice sounded genuine.

"The three of you—" Bruce gestured to Wanda, Sam, and Steve "—you can join up. It’s the right play." He turned to Tony. “But me? There's no way Ross signed off on my invite."

Tony seemed to deflate. "Not specifically, no," he admitted. 

“And he isn’t going to, no matter what he said.”

“So we hide you in the basement,” Rhodes suggested. 

Bruce shook his head. “Ross knows Steve and the others broke me out. No way he’s going to buy that they lost track of me. And that would be enough to throw them in the Raft even if Ross doesn’t find me. There’s only one way to play this.” 

No one answered immediately, and Bruce could see them all trying, and failing, to find an objection. 

“OK,” Tony agreed. “In that case we don't have a lot of time.” He turned to Rhodes. “We can use the remote system for the suits as a control—you and Vision go dig it up and start the modifications.” He shifted back to Bruce. “C’mon.”

Tony lead the way back to the workshop and rummaged through a pile of bric-a-brac on one table before coming up with a small box. “Got it. Just needs a couple of modifications.”

Not well enough versed in the mechanics involved, Bruce could do nothing but watch Tony work, which provided all too much time to contemplate what he was getting back into. The cell, again. The Asshole, the Kid, and four square meters for however long it took for Natasha to convince the UN to get him out. Or until he broke, and let the Other Guy paint those white walls red.

He didn't have to do it. Could refuse to go along, could hide in the basement and take his chances. Or he could run — let the Other Guy out to play sooner rather than later and tear through Ross’s flimsy perimeter, leaving all of this behind. 

It was the better play, really. He'd never belonged with the Avengers, their shining armor and stubborn resolve. They had options. They could claim that he escaped, and after a sighting or two of the Other Guy, Ross might believe them. And if not? Well, they were all grown adults who ought to be able to handle themselves, who could damn well spend a few years of their own lives on the run, the way Bruce himself had done with not a lot of help from anybody. 

The sound of metal on the workbench jolted Bruce out of his thoughts. Tony held a tiny speck aloft. “Done. Now we just need to hide it.”

Bruce forced himself to pay attention. There was a chance that the plan would work, and if there was a chance, he had to take it. The other option was to leave all of them under Ross's control, and he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Even if a part of him—most of him, maybe—rebelled at the thought. 

"Right. And just where is it going to go?"

Tony leered as if to make a lewd joke, but the look flickered across his face and was gone before his lips parted. "We put together a cuff or something, tell Ross it controls the Hulk. Maybe he believes us, maybe he doesn’t, but I bet he leaves it on. Guy’s scared shitless of you, you know.”

“I noticed.”

Tony turned back to the table and pulled out some repulsor cuffs and a few scraps of metal, and got to work again. The cuff was barely cooled when Friday piped in with a warning. "Three minutes until the Secretary reaches the common room, Sir."

"Ok, ok, we’re working on it.” He gestured for Bruce to hold out one arm, and Bruce reluctantly complied. The slim bit of metal was snug around his wrist—tight, but not uncomfortable. Tony pointed to a small divot, hardly noticeable. “Two taps here and the drone deploys. Three taps and the cuff will start transmitting audio from the bug. One tap after that and it stops.”

Not much, but when he thought of the bare white walls of his cell, it felt like everything, and when he spoke, the thick emotion in his voice surprised even him. “Thanks.”

“Wish it were better. No video, no control.” He shook his head. “Not enough time.”

“No problem.” Bruce almost laughed at the absurdity of that statement, but caught himself in time.

Tony must have noticed the borderline hysteria in his voice, because he gave Bruce a companionable slap on the shoulder. “We’re getting you back. Believe it.”

“Two minutes, Sir.”

Tony let out a long breath. “Right. Well. Better get there before he does."

They entered the main room to find the others already there. Natasha and Rhodes sat in one corner, attempting to chat about Rhodes' recovery, while Sam and Steve stared blankly at a television, and Wanda and Vision stood in the kitchen, vaguely attempting to make some food.

They all stopped as Bruce walked in, but no one spoke or met his eyes until Wanda cut through the silence. “We will not let you rot in there. One way or another, we will get you out.”

“No question,” Natasha agreed, at the same moment that Steve gave him a solemn nod and Sam clapped him on the shoulder. 

"One minute," Friday's voice rang out, and Bruce flinched.

Natasha took a breath. "Ok.” She walked over, met his eyes. “We’re going to have to make this look good." 

For an instant Bruce wondered if she was going to hit him, but instead she held out thick plastic restraints.

He nodded, offered a resigned smile, and held his hands out, but she shook her head. "Behind your back. It's what he’ll expect.” 

Bruce tried for a laugh, failed, and put his hands behind his back. The thin band tightened around his wrists, and he heard the rasp of plastic settling into position. He forced his head up, looked around the room at the others. A wave of nausea surged through him, whether from the humiliation of allowing this or the fear of being returned to Ross's clutches, he didn't know. Either way, it burned off in the sudden conflagration of rage that tore through his blood as Thaddeus Ross strode through the door and laid proprietary eyes on him.

Ross's initial satisfaction was replaced with irritation as he surveyed the room and noted Steve, Sam, and Wanda. "What the hell is going on here?"

"New recruits," Tony announced, the tone as carefully flippant as only he could make it. He clapped Steve on the shoulder. "We've made up—bygones, bygones, etcetera. And they've joined the team, as per your explicit and clearly recorded invitation."

Ross starred, and his eyes narrowed as he processed Tomy’s thinly veiled threat. “Glad to have them on board,” he said in a tone that clearly conveyed that he was anything but.

"Are they the ones who brought him in?"

Tony cut in before Steve or the others could respond. "More or less. We had some conversations."

Steve looked down at his hands, then up at Ross, his eyes conveying all the sincerity Captain America could muster. "There's only one thing you should do with a fifty megaton warhead. Put it someplace safe."

The words twisted in Bruce's gut, and he wondered if it was possible that Steve was that good a liar.

"Well." Ross huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Finally a sensible decision out of you."

"He will be someplace safe, will he not, Secretary?" Wanda made no attempt to hide the contempt in her voice.

"Save as houses, sweetheart." Ross turned back to Bruce. "See? Everyone with any sense agrees. The best place for you is somewhere very, very secure."

Bruce didn't answer, didn't even let himself move, though he couldn't keep his muscles from tensing.

Ross gestured at the cuff. "What's this thing?"

"You noticed.” Tony flicked a finger against the metal. “Yeah, that one's mine. Keeps him from doing the Hulk bit. You're welcome."

"Yeah? How do you know it works?"

Sam crossed his arms over his chest. "We're handing him over to you and he isn't all green and monosyllabic. What other proof do you need?"

Ross grunted an acknowledgement of the point, but his expression didn’t budge. 

Suddenly Ross’s hand struck out. Bruce's face flared with pain and he staggered back. With his hands bound behind him he couldn't break his fall and he landed in a heap. 

Humiliation overcame the pain, and once again fury chased everything else away. The heat of it coursed through his blood and the temptation to let it take him over was like lust in his veins. He drew in a breath and turned the wave aside. Instead he shifted back to his knees—as upright as he could manage under the circumstances. He looked up at Ross, let his fury show through his eyes for an instant, and spat blood on the shining polish of Ross's boot.

Ross rubbed the back of his hand and laughed to himself. "Yeah, it'll do. But we've got better." He gestured to one of the men at his side, who produced a slim case and opened it.

Bruce barely felt the sting of the needle before the drug did its work and everything went black.


	7. Chapter 7

The first thing Bruce noticed was the air. Stale and still, with a familiar scent that registered as dread in every cell of his body. He didn't open his eyes—the sight of those white walls would be more than he could handle.

Instead he swallowed down the bile in his throat and listened. But there was nothing—an oppressive silence that told him only that his cell was shut, and he was alone inside it. Again.

His muscles felt stiff and his head was still clouded by the drug, but he forced himself to swing his legs over the edge of his cot and sit up. He paused again, listened again, to see whether anyone had noticed that he was awake.

Still no sound at the door, no indication that there was anyone anywhere in the world apart from him.

He sat there, in the silence, willing the panic and the fury to wash through him, over him. He couldn't let it go—he needed it, the anger at least—but he couldn't let it take him over. The Kid was probably still around somewhere, and dozens of others who were just following orders, and maybe didn't deserve to be smashed into paste for it. 

But this time, that wasn't the only reason, Bruce reminded himself. This time he had a purpose here, a plan. This time there was hope, and that made all the difference.

Or it should have. But even so, when he finally opened his eyes the featureless cell sent nausea through him in waves, and for an instant he wasn't sure if he was going to wretch, or let the Other Guy out. Or, he suggested to himself with grim amusement—both. It wasn't actually funny, but it allowed him to muster a wry smile, and tamped the panic down to a manageable level.

The door opened—they must have been watching him after all—and the Asshole strode in. "Back already? Did you miss the accommodations?" He displayed a tray of what passed for food here, and tossed it onto Bruce's cot, where most of it slid over the edge and onto the mattress in a little wave of brown sludge. "Hope you don't think you're going to pull that trick again. You're here until Ross says you get to go, and I don't think he's gonna be saying that any time soon, do you?" 

Bruce saw no advantage in answering, and didn't.

The slap came fast, almost out of nowhere, and against his will Bruce looked up and met the Asshole's eyes. 

The Asshole flinched back, the bravado of violence obviously overcome—for a moment at least—by his recollection of exactly what Bruce was. His eyes flicked to Bruce's arm band. Interesting. So Ross had told them what it supposedly did. Probably for the best—it would mean that they wouldn't take it away from him, just as Tony intended. 

Apparently reassured by Bruce's non-reaction, the Asshole chuckled and aimed a knee at Bruce's groin. Bruce let instinct to take over and dodged out of the way, hooking out with one leg to knock the Asshole off balance.

His ass on the floor made a satisfying smack, but Bruce regretted it almost immediately when three other guards appeared—the Kid among them—and tackled him to the ground. He let it happen, absorbed the kick to his side, the twist of his arm. Let the pain run through him and out, and ignored the curses and taunts. 

They shackled his ankles and replaced his handcuffs with something stronger, and left him on the floor.

The Kid left last, with a guilty glance that enraged Bruce almost more than the violence had. If he was going to have a fucking conscience he could damn well do something about it, and if not, he could spare Bruce the need to feel sorry for him. Useless little bastard, in so far over his head it was a wonder he was still breathing.

The door remained firmly shut for hours after that. Bruce struggled into a sitting position, awkward with his hands cuffed behind him, but more comfortable than sprawled on top of them. He figured it had to have been a day at least by the time he got hungry enough to eat the slop off the tray, face first because they'd left him no other option. The humiliation of it burned, but it was worth it to have something in his stomach other than bile.

He slept some. Woke, slept some more. 

Eventually the door opened again. This time it was the Kid, smiling that apologetic smile that made Bruce want to reach down his throat and strangle him from the inside out. But instead he sat still, kept his eyes down, his mouth shut. The Kid placed a tray next to him and hesitated, gesturing at the cuffs on Bruce's wrist. "I'm sorry, I can't—"

Bruce shrugged. The Kid wasn't innocent in this, but he didn't have any real power either. It wasn't worth the argument.

The kid picked up the plastic spoon, and hesitated again before speaking. "I could help—" He brought the spoon up, as if to pantomime feeding an infant.

Bruce did look up then, and he'd have sworn he could feel the green tinge to his eyes. "Get the hell out."

Bruce still wasn’t sure if the Kid knew all the specifics of the situation, but obviously he had some idea, because he blanched and almost ran out of the cell, the door clicking firmly shut behind him.

The next time the door opened it was someone new. Someone in a lab coat, and Bruce's heart sang to see it. If she was there for a blood draw, that meant that his drone would have something to follow. And that meant that finally, finally, their plan might be going somewhere.

She stepped in gingerly, eyeing the room and him both with unconcealed distaste. Bruce fought welling shame at his position, and the filth they’d locked him in. He shifted to sit a little straighter in spite of the restraints.

To her credit, she met his eyes. “Dr. Banner.”

“And you are—?”

“Dr. Murphy.” She seemed to be holding herself together by sheer force of will, but at least it was working—the hand that held the syringe barely trembled. “We need a blood sample.”

“And they sent you? Where's the med tech?”

This reminder seemed to strengthen her resolve, and when she spoke her voice didn’t strain quite as badly around the edges. “I understand that she was unable to get a sample.” Her smile turned icy. “I won’t repeat her mistakes.”

A part of Bruce wanted to get the whole thing over with, but he knew that to give in so easily would give away the game. And anyway, the pasted-on confidence of that smile rubbed him the wrong way. He wouldn’t mind wiping it off her face before he let her have his blood. “Mistakes?” Bruce kept his tone deliberately mild, and wondered if she would have the sense to read it as the threat it was.

“She lacked resolve. You’ll find I don’t.” She took three quick steps to close the distance between them and grasped his forearm. “Hold still and this can be painless for both of us.”

He looked up at her and let the fury he felt show in his eyes for a heartbeat before he surged upwards. The cuffs at wrists and ankles made the move awkward, but it obviously got his point across, because her back slammed into the opposite wall, and he could see the fear in her eyes. 

He smiled, letting himself walk right up to the edge and revel in the power that was still—always—available to him. He couldn’t use it. He could never fucking use it when he most wanted to, but remembering how close it was blunted the worst of the humiliation.

He didn’t even mind when the guards rushed in again, tackled him, again, and held him down while she slid the needle under his skin.

It was easy enough in the struggle to tap his cuff twice, and where the metal hugged the skin of his wrist he felt a tiny click as the bug launched into the air. Bruce twisted in the grip of the guards, forcing all of their attention onto him, and—hopefully—leaving none for the little speck that flew up toward the ceiling and hovered there.

In a minute it was all over, and Murphy was tucking vials of his blood into a padded case. It clicked shut, and she threw a triumphant smile in his direction before disappearing from the room. The guards followed, and once again Bruce was left alone with his thoughts.

He didn't dare turn the receiver on right away—he had to give it at least a little time to follow Murphy where she was going and pick up whatever it could there before he could possibly risk the plan by checking on it. He didn't think that the guards had audio on his cell, but he couldn't be sure.

Still, the thought of contact with the outside world, even if it was just down the hall, tempted him. His thoughts ran to it again and again, like a tongue to a loose tooth. Even if he couldn't give into temptation, it was a better focus for his thoughts than the ache of his arms behind him, the bruises on thigh and elbow and ribs.

He managed to get to his feet and shuffle the meter or so to collapse onto the cot. He found the least uncomfortable position available and shut his eyes, but he knew that sleep wasn't going to come.

He couldn't listen in on the bug until he'd given it some time, but it occurred to him that he could probably find out if it was going to be safe to do it later. Without moving, he let out a high pitched whine, loud as he could make it. 

The noise wore on his nerves almost immediately, but the idea that it might also be wearing on the nerves of the guards outside was satisfaction enough to keep him going. To amuse himself, he tried variations, exploring all the sounds his throat could make while appearing fast asleep to the cameras. The door stayed closed, which meant they either couldn't hear him or didn't care, and either option felt like a victory.

His throat was raw by the time he finally passed out.

He spent as much of the next day making noise as he could, abandoning the idea of pretending to sleep. He banged his shackles against the bed, receipted poetry and equations, screamed at the top of his lungs. What his guards thought of his behavior he had no idea—probably that he'd finally lost it entirely—but that was beside the point. By the time he dared to tap the cuff three times and listen in on the audio from the bug, he was sure the guards had stopped listening, if they ever had been to begin with.

The audio itself was a disappointment, but Bruce reminded himself that he couldn't very well have expected otherwise. Over a light hiss of static he heard the clatter of a keyboard, the scrape of a chair, footsteps—both heeled and otherwise—and here and there a scrap of small talk.

He listened whenever he thought he could get away with it for days. For once, in this place, he had a sense of time—at night nothing could be heard through the bug but silence, while in the morning he caught light conversation, and occasionally an actual reference to the work in the lab.

But to his frustration, nothing he overheard was genuinely incriminating. Blood samples analyzed, some of the more obvious abnormalities of his blood noted, and once speculation about exactly what had been in the serum that had been the beginning of everything, for him. But they never admitted what he needed to hear, that they were trying to recreate it, in hopes of recreating _him_ , but better.

And then, three days after he first dared listen in, the feed stopped. There was no warning, no exclamations of a bug sweep or a suspicious object found. Just silence, complete and constant.

Bruce sat among the four white walls and stared straight ahead, eyes unfocused and stomach churning. For three days he had almost forgotten the oppressive quiet of the cell, the impossible situation he was in, and now it came crashing down around him as though all of it were new.

And in a way, it was, because if the bug was down, then so was the plan, and no hope remained that Natasha would win the UN around and get the whole damn prison shut down. No way out of there, for him, except the one he'd always had and could never use.

In those first minutes his mind couldn't focus, couldn't figure out how to do anything at all. Not that it could possibly matter what he did anyway.

He supposed that he slept, eventually, because he started awake when the Kid banged in and offered up a new tray of glop. Bruce ignored the Kid and the tray both, and the Kid quickly took the hint and backed out.

Later—maybe a day, maybe an hour, the lack of time felt heavier on him than ever—the Asshole came in. He surveyed Bruce where he lay slumped over on the cot, and smirked. "Give up on all that hollering? Guess you're finally settling in. Glad to know we've made you feel so welcome." Instead of picking up the old tray he left it where he sat, and simply dumped the new one on top of it. Old food—maybe stew, who knows—oozed out between them, and Bruce felt a surge of cold rage.

He didn't turn. He knew his reasons as well as ever, knew that the Other Guy couldn't be trusted here, not with the frame of mind Bruce was in and wasn't likely to get out of. But his fresh anger broke through the worst of the hopeless haze, and Bruce found himself straightening to sit upright and look the Asshole in the eyes.

The Asshole flinched, and Bruce smiled to see it. Kept smiling, a threat in his eyes, as the Asshole fled.

Alone again in his cell, the silence suddenly felt clarifying—almost peaceful. And Bruce remembered that though he was still trapped, still alone, he wasn't without resources.

It took probably half an hour, and some contortions that Bruce hadn't been sure he could manage, but he got his cuffed hands around his legs and in front where he could see them. After that it was short, if disgusting, work with the two trays to chip off a piece of plastic small and sharp enough to make for something of a tool.

By now it seemed apparent that no one was watching, but Bruce settled himself with his back to the cameras he knew about anyway, just in case. He pried open the sleek metal cover of his cuff and surveyed the guts of the thing. It was a little hard working on unfamiliar tech and without his glasses, but from what he could tell it wasn’t bad—there was more in there than there had to be. Probably leftover from whatever the cuff was supposed to be, before Tony repurposed it for this. But maybe Tony had left it there for a reason.

To have a project, even a likely pointless project, felt like pure joy in contrast to the endless tedium of his days, and he was almost disappointed when he got the cuff tuned in to the guards' communication system and adjusted for the minimal security system they were using. They probably figured the shielding around the Raft was all they needed, and any internal systems would only be redundant.

He only just had the cuff closed up and the plastic pick hidden in the lining of his shirt when the door opened. Bruce slid a finger along the cuff with one quick tap to silence it, and let himself glance up at the guard walking in to see if he'd noticed.

The Kid threw a puzzled glance at the mess on the trays, then seemed to notice that Bruce had gotten his hands shifted out from behind his back. The Kid smiled sympathetically and gave an almost theatrical wink. A kindness, Bruce supposed, to allow him that little dignity. And as long as that's all the Kid thought it was about, Bruce could almost find it in himself to feel grateful. But not grateful enough to return the smile.

The Kid cleaned away the old trays and left a new one, and this time the empty hollow of Bruce's stomach was motivation enough to choke it down. With his hands in front of him, he could at least eat with a little dignity.

The guards' coms weren't much at first—check-ins and shift changes which at least provided some shape to the days, but offered little else in terms of information or even entertainment.

Until just after the fourth shift change, when suddenly all hell broke loose.

"Incoming, incoming." A woman's voice, not one he recognized.

"The hell are you talking about? Incoming from where?" A man, also someone new.

"She's—fuck. It's the bitch we had in here last month. Maximoff."

Bruce felt a lump of ice invade his stomach, making his chest tighten and his gorge rise. Maybe he should have expected this, after they lost the bug, but he honestly hadn’t. It was a stupid move. Catastrophically, horrifically stupid. Bruce flicked open the cuff and tried to think of something—anything—he could do with it. Whether he wanted to help her or warn her away, he couldn't tell, and it didn't matter anyway because he had no way to do either.

"What's her location?"

"Outside, I think. I have her on cameras but she's doing something to the exterior. Topside, third quadrant."

"Sending backup, Jones. Engaging emergency sequence—we'll be below the water line in ten. All we need to do is hold her off until then."

“Hull’s heating up at her location. Almost two thousand degrees, Sir, it’s weakening.”

"Relax." The first man again. "We’re under--she can let go or she can drown, but either way she’s not getting in."

No reports of anyone else. Shit. Shit. Bruce’s mind filled with scenarios that could have led to this. Had the others given up, and Wanda decided to go it alone? Or was there a plan? In spite of himself, Bruce felt a little thrill of hope at the idea that it was all of them, that it was enough of them to get him out, and get them all far, far away. Whatever happened after that might not be great, but it would be better than here.

"Well tell it to her, 'cause she’s underwater but she’s still there. And she’s—I don’t know what she’s doing, but it’s like she’s got an air bubble around her."

"Shit." For the first time, the guy actually sounded worried. "Seal off the top level. Evacuate non-combat personnel inside if they can get there in thirty seconds—otherwise, seal it up. What's the status on the backup team?"

"They’ve got the order, and— Strike that, they’re down."

"Down?"

"Passed out, I think." A pause. "Yeah, I'm still getting vitals.”

“Is the hull holding?”

“So far, yeah, but it’s starting to show some damage. It’s not going to last much longer.”

Bruce stood in his cell, hope burning through his veins like a drug. The Other Guy stirred, sensing his excitement, or maybe just Wanda's presence somewhere far above them. Temptation flared, but Bruce beat it down and kept the Other Guy locked away. For now.

Instead he stood, palms sweating, heart pounding, and waited.

He could hear a bang over the com, and Jones’ voice curdled with panic. "She’s in. Fuck."

"Where's the second team?"

"They're on their way, but, Sir, it's gonna be bad. Who knows what the witch can do."

"This is the job, Jones, keep it together. I'm sending another team your way."

The comm buzzed with static for an instant, and suddenly a familiar voice broke through. "Nah, belay that order. Get your guys out of the way—we've got this."

"Stark?" The relief in the commanding officer's voice almost drowned out an edge of hostility, but not quite.

"Saving your asses again, yes, you're welcome."

"He's—I'm reading three of them," Jones broke in.

"All me, actually. Automation—it's a wonderful thing. Just give me a minute and I'll get your invader to the brig, or whatever you're calling it."

The comm went dead for a minute, and then Bruce could hear the faint sound of metal on metal, a repulsor blast, a scream. Then a longer pause.

"Are you done?" Tony asked. Whatever response he got didn't make it to the comm, but Bruce heard another blast. "Wrong answer. Are. You. Done." Silence again, and then: "Good call.”

"He did it," Jones breathed. "She’s—it looks like she’s surrendered."

Another silence. Bruce forced himself to breathe normally, to keep himself functioning for long enough to figure out what the hell was going on here. A plan, maybe—pretend to attack the base, make it look like Tony was on Ross's side. Not a bad idea, really. If it bought him access to the right levels, he could get into the lab before anybody realized that he was lying, get the information they needed. And maybe get Bruce out sooner rather than later, too.

But in his heart he didn't really buy the line his brain was feeding him. There was another explanation, one that he couldn't quite believe, but the sinking feeling in his stomach couldn't let him ignore it.

Finally, a new voice broke the silence on the com.

"Prisoner is secure, sir, in a cell on level 14. Mr. Stark delivered her personally."

Bruce cursed softly and let his legs give out enough to collapse back onto the edge of his cot. If this were a ploy, that didn't make any sense. Why lock Wanda up if the plan was to get them out again?

"You're welcome," Tony sounded irritated, and Bruce tried to read his tone, decipher his real intent, but nothing in it pointed to any particular conclusion. "Just to be clear, I'm not going to keep interrupting my busy schedule to make up for your incompetence. But, I'll do you a favor—the hulkbuster suit can stay. Should take care of any new problems that come up."

"I— I'll need to get approval from—"

"Yeah, yeah, don't care. If I wanted to listen to bureaucratic nonsense I'd be back at Stark Industries. Which, actually—" a pause "—yep, overdue for a thing, gotta go. Good luck with your floating human rights violation." 

Another pause, and then Jones' voice again. "He's gone."

"Where's the extra suits?"

"One went with him, the other one is on level 14. Should we—?"

"Try to move it? Hell no. I'll put it up the chain, see what they brass want to do. Until then, leave it alone, and go about your duties. Write up the report once you're off the watch, and don't make us look like assholes in it. Bad enough as it is."

After that the com went quiet, and eventually returned to the usual run of protocol and routine. 

Bruce sat on the cot, staring dumbly at the wall.

He had no idea what had happened, he told himself. Maybe a plan, maybe— He shook his head, and tried not to finish that thought. It wouldn't do him any good to think about it, even if it was only what he should always have expected.

Somehow he managed to get through the next few hours, his mind numb even as his body ached from the rush of tension that he still couldn't quite release. He forced himself through his old routine of exercises, and tried to bring to mind some of the mental calculations that had sustained him through his first stay at the Raft. It was only as he wound to the end of his "daily" routine that he realized that for the first time since he'd returned here, he was back to his old schedule—acknowledging without admitting to himself that he had to keep it up, because there was no telling when, or if, he'd get out.


	8. Chapter 8

Bruce slept fitfully that night, and for the first time since he'd landed back in the cell he dreamed.

He was in a warm room, expansive and filled with the cheerful debris of a party. Around him his team lingered—Tony and Rhodes trading jokes, Thor egging Clint on at some game, Natasha's hand gracefully curved around her bottle of beer. The scene felt warm and welcoming, and for some reason he couldn't put his finger on, all of it made his chest ache.

Suddenly all their faces fell and they stared at him, the pleasant chatter falling away to deafening silence. Bruce looked down at his hands, and saw the green tinge obvious even in the dim light, though his body couldn't feel the change yet. A hand touched his arm and he turned to find Wanda standing there, her dark eyes locked on his face with an urgent intensity. Her lips parted but no sound emerged.

He turned back, and once again the others were smiling and laughing, paying him no more attention than they ever did. Natasha raised her beer to him in a little salute, and beckoned him over. He stood and took a step, but once again he felt Wanda's cold fingers gripping his arm, hard this time. 

"You have to let go." Her words sounded thin and distant, and he didn't want to hear them. For a moment her dress was a straightjacket, but then it was a dress again, and she was smiling and laughing along with the rest.

He tried to let himself relax into the moment, knowing with more urgency than ever that he had to enjoy those few moments of peace that he could find, but when Wanda spoke again, she was louder, and harder to ignore. "You have to let him out. We need you."

His hands were green again, and he could feel his skin tighten and relax, his muscles bulge. He looked up and in front of him the Hulkbuster armor loomed—still, for the moment, much taller than Bruce was. Bruce raised his hands, palms out, as if in surrender. "It's okay, Tony, it's me." But when the visor of the armor lifted it wasn't Tony at all, but Natasha, and when she spoke it was with Wanda's voice. "Help us. There's only one way."

Bruce woke with a start, sweat icy cold on the back of his neck. He heard some kind of alarm, and it took him a moment to realize that it was coming from the cuff. He'd forgotten to turn it off when he slept—stupid, that, but useful now. The alarm faded behind the voices of the guards.

"She's breached the Lab, level 12."

"Where the hell did she come from?"

"I don't know, Sir."

"Well seal the damn place up."

"Done, Sir. Full containment protocol is in place. Readings on the air seal show it's secure. I don't know how she got in, Sir, but she isn't getting out."

"Huh." A thoughtful pause. "I've heard things about Romanoff. I don't know if she's a freak or not, but Dr. Murphy's gonna have a field day finding out."

Natasha. Here. For an instant Bruce too was baffled about how she'd made it in, until a flash of memory from his dream hit him—Natasha's face framed by the Hulkbuster suit.

If he'd been standing, relief would have buckled his knees. He wondered at himself, to feel such a surge of euphoria when his situation, and Wanda's, wasn't much improved, and Natasha's was worse than he'd known to fear. But he couldn't tamp down his overwhelming, surprising surge of emotion at knowing that he hadn't been abandoned here. There had been a plan after all.

If only he knew what it was.

But all he could do was wait, and hope that somehow, for some reason, Natasha getting caught was a part of the plan.

“You think if Ross can make more like the Widow, they’ll all be built like that? ‘Cause that’s what I call a superpower, if you know what I mean.”

“Everyone knows what you mean, asshole,” a female voice broke in. “The project is to protect national security, not to make a harem for your pathetic ass.”

“To be fair,” a third voice, “there’s no way anybody who wasn’t built in a lab’s gonna screw Anderson.”

Bruce's heartbeat pounded in his ears as he waited for any indication that there was a plan, that Natasha had a way out. But all he heard were more unpleasant jokes about exactly what the research team wanted to do to her, and the more he heard on that front, the louder his pulse grew in his ears, until it almost blocked out the voices on the com.

And then there was another voice, thin and weak, but somehow as close as if she were whispering in his ear. Wanda.

"It's time. You have to let him out."

Bruce frowned, trying to puzzle out how she could be speaking to him, while in the back of his brain the Other Guy howled in agreement with her words. For a split second he saw blue fabric slowly fraying, a small tear growing larger, and knew it for her answer.

"There's no time to lose. Let him out."

Bruce huffed out a laugh. "And here I was thinking you had a plan." He had no idea if she could hear him, and felt more than a little foolish talking to himself. Not that it was any more foolish than how he'd behaved for most of his stay here.

"We do. You are the plan." 

"It's a bad idea," he muttered, almost by habit. "Can't you—"

"I can barely do this. And it's only a matter of time until they find the tear." As if to prove her point, her voice grew weaker still, before he felt a final push against his mind. It was different from before, in Johannesburg, different from the wrenching sensation he'd felt before when her mind reached out, knowingly or not, to the Other Guy. This time it spoke of a fierce loathing of this place and the consuming rage of confinement, and Bruce felt himself rejoicing in her call almost as much as the Other Guy did.

It was like a fire raging through his blood, far too much to breathe through, to ignore, to pass along some other route of his neural system. The reasons for fighting this impulse were no different than they had ever been—there were still those on the Raft who didn't deserve to meet the Other Guy, much as it would give Bruce satisfaction to introduce them. But on the other side now were Natasha and Wanda, waiting like lab rats for whatever Ross's minions might try. Not to mention all the ill that Ross would inflict on innocent or not so innocent lives from whatever his research team learned.

Bruce’s skin stretched, his muscles contorted, and he felt himself fill with a glorious fury. He opened himself to it, felt his dread and his guilt burn away, and let himself burn away too in the sharp rush of adrenaline and rage. 

And then there was nothing but those four white walls and his fists, bashing them away to nothing. Bright pain flared at his wrist, and he stopped for a moment to look. Too-strong metal biting Hulk’s flesh, and Hulk drew back his arm to smash it into the the crumbling wall, but something made him stop again.

Through the remains of the cell door, Hulk saw puny humans scattering with a terror that filled him with delicious satisfaction. Only one held his ground, and Hulk smiled to see how he trembled. Hulk remembered him, puny and weak even to puny Banner, and Hulk roared his fury at the little man who kept Banner in his cage. Now he could make him pay, smash him into nothing but bones and blood. Hulk snatched him up in one hand and felt his puny flesh begin to yield to Hulk’s fist.

But suddenly Hulk felt a voice calling to him. He stopped. It was the Witch's voice, pulsing with a hot fury that Hulk liked very much. That promised better targets elsewhere.

Hulk roared out an objection, but the voice insisted. Hulk cocked his head to one side and considered it. The Witch’s voice sang in his blood, and Hulk let the puny boy drop from his hand to follow that voice. 

He broke through the wall, bellowing in rage and joy as metal bent and tore and and concrete crumbled all around him. The Witch called him upwards and he leapt through ceiling and floor, again and again until the world blared with sirens and pulsing red lights, and through layers of glass he could see the Spider, swarmed by other humans but fighting still. 

Hulk remembered the Spider, remembered that she had always liked him, helped him, not like puny Bruce. Hulk dove at the glass and felt it shatter around him, shards of bright light falling over his skin. He batted the puny humans away from the Spider and lifted her up.

She smiled at him and said something, but Hulk didn't care to stop and listen because the humans were still moving and rage surged through him again. He lifted a hand to make them stop, forever, but the Witch called him again.

Suddenly, Hulk knew what this room was for, and he remembered. The needles, the machines, the blood taken, used. To make another Hulk of some other Banner, or worse, to control Hulk himself. 

Rage surged through him and out, until the Spider tumbled to the ground and shoved the puny humans away and out. Hulk roared his fury at their backs but did not follow. The desks and chairs, the boxes with their stink of hot electricity and the humming chests, cold with the stench of blood, all of it dissolved under his strong hands. He didn't stop until there was nothing but dust, and then he felt the Witch call to him again, and leapt up again, through a ceiling already weak from his rage, and through another, until Hulk found himself in a box of boxes, face to face with the Witch herself. 

His fist smashed through the glass around her, and Hulk roared his satisfaction at the way she flinched. The Witch was good but had been not good, and he liked her but didn't like her, and he was glad to see her fear.

But also glad to see her strength, which called to him and echoed in his blood. He reached out and grasped her by the flimsy cloth that kept her power in, and her mind called to his, her fear like a supplication. He tore the cloth off her and felt her emerge, bright in the dim room—bright enough that Hulk couldn't look.

"Let's go," she said, and then the Spider was there too. He picked up the both of them and leapt again, tearing through the ceiling with the two humans beneath his arms so that they wouldn't crumble too.

Finally Hulk reached one last ceiling—this one thick and hard enough that he had to drop the Witch and the Spider and bash at it again and again, until hot sunlight shone through and they were out in the open air.

Hulk looked around and found nothing but a patch of metal ground and water on every side. Nothing left to bash or destroy until suddenly a ship appeared, floating in the air, and then humans like ants flowed up out of the ground and onto it, and Hulk surged toward it until the Witch and Spider both stood before him, arms raised.

The Witch's mind sang to him of the sinking ship, and vengeance satisfied. Hulk roared for more—for blood—but the need was less than it had been before. 

And then the Spider reached out a hand, and Hulk felt the call of an old comfort, and listened.

"Sun's getting real low."

Compelled by memory, Hulk held out a hand to hers, and the hot sun and the bright sea faded around him to a warm, soft nothing.

 

Bruce woke to a haze of memory or dream, and kept his eyes closed. He wasn't ready yet to face the confines of his cell. But slowly, he became aware of a low buzz of activity—sounds that never could have penetrated those white walls.

His eyes opened to see the quinjet around him. A slight shift in air pressure told him they were still in flight.

He pushed himself to an upright position and looked around. Natasha at the controls, Wanda sitting to one side, her gaze fixed on something on one of the displays.

"Hey, buddy, welcome back." Tony's hand came to rest on Bruce's shoulder, and Bruce flinched away before he could even process why.

Tony saw it, apparently, because he took a step back and held up his hands in a parody of surrender. "Not quite back yet, I get that."

Bruce frowned, unsure of how to respond. He shifted to his knees and then to his feet, feeling unsteady as he took in the situation.

It was just the four of them, apparently, and outside the aircraft it was night. He blinked, still silent, as his mind ran over his time in the cell, discovering the memory almost as if it were new. The bug, and then the guards' com, and then Tony, and Natasha's capture and the touch of Wanda's mind. And then—

Bruce never remembered much of what the Other Guy did when he took over. Shards of memory, a general air of frustration or satisfaction, but not much more. But now he remembered the way the Raft had crumbled around him, the feeling of the Kid's terrified heartbeat held in one powerful fist.

Nausea swept over him, and he took a step backward. The metal of one of the jet's struts touched his back, cool through the thin blanket someone had draped over his shoulders. He reached behind him with one hand to steady himself on the strut, and looked around again.

"What happened?"

Tony smiled, but Bruce could see the tension around the edges. "You broke out. Got Wanda and Nat out with you. More or less according to plan."

"More or less?"

Tony hesitated. "According to _a_ plan. Not the original one."

Bruce frowned, wondering if Tony was going to come to the point any time soon. 

"We didn't get the intel," Natasha cut in from where she sat in the pilot's seat. "Not— we have something, but not what we needed. But you got us out."

Bruce remembered, with a little of the cold nausea that had haunted him on the inside, what they’d planned to do to her. “Did they get your blood? Anything?”

She shook her head. “They were a little busy trying to save their asses.”

He nodded at that. "The Raft?" 

"At the bottom of the ocean," Tony told him. "Nobody's ever sticking anybody there again. I call that a job well done."

"What about—?" he couldn't figure out how to complete the question, but Wanda answered it anyway.

"We had a team. Steve, Sam, Vision, and some others. All personnel are alive and accounted for, whether they deserve it or not."

Bruce sagged with relief for a moment, but tensed again almost immediately. "But we didn't get the evidence."

Tony's face turned dark. "The bug died, still no idea why—I think it ran up against a stronger magnetic field than I was expecting. Ross is a paranoid bastard, though in fairness I am out to get him. After that—”

"After that we came in." Though by the glare Wanda shot in Tony's direction, Bruce wondered if the decision might not have been entirely mutual.

Bruce nodded slowly. "So it was the plan, to have Tony—" Bruce stopped, the words "betray you," too dramatic to speak aloud. "To have him catch Wanda?"

"What, you thought I'd—" He stopped. "Really?"

Bruce ducked his head, unable to face the indignation that he knew covered more than wounded pride. "A guy's stuck in a cell for a while, he gets credulous."

Tony shrugged, though Bruce knew better to buy the nonchalance in the gesture. "Right, well. Ross thinks I'm still his toadie, which believe it or not, worked to our advantage."

"To a point," Natasha agreed, eyes still on the controls, but attention obvious on the conversation. "Tony snuck me in inside a Hulkbuster suit, told Ross it was there to keep things under control. Plan was I get to the lab and get some evidence, get out again the way I got in."

"What went wrong?"

"Ross is really, truly, a paranoid sonofabitch." She shrugged. "There was a reason we scratched frontal assault off the list in the first place. The lab was bugged six ways to Sunday, and I only caught the first five."

The guilt in her tone made him ache in a way that he couldn't answer and wasn't yet ready to explore.

"You made the best of a bad situation," Tony insisted. "And you knew Bruce would be coming to get you."

"I didn't get the intel. By the time the Other Guy made enough of a distraction for me to get out of the lab, the computers were wiped. I got a couple of thumb drives, but neither one has anything worth having." She smashed one hand against a wall. “The bastards were taunting me with exactly what we needed, but I didn’t get a damn thing on tape.”

"So where does that leave us?" Bruce asked, though he knew the answer already, heavy in his gut. They were out of the Raft, but without any of the evidence that could have justified the break in, or the escape. They were fugitives, again, and in worse shape than ever.

By the grim silence that answered, the others knew it too.

He rubbed at his wrist, where Tony's cuff rubbed his skin raw. It had been mangled by the Other Guy, but somehow or other had remained mostly intact.

Tony's eyes fell on the cuff, and he frowned. "How did you know I caught Wan..." His voice trailed off, and his face brightened. "You hacked it." He grabbed Bruce by both shoulders. "You genius, you hacked the cuff with nothing but a paperclip and some pocket lint."

Bruce frowned, unable to parse the sudden elation in Tony's voice. "Parts of a food tray, actually."

"The point is, you were listening in on the comms. With the cuff."

Bruce nodded, and watched in confusion as Tony reached freed the cuff with a quick motion, whisking it away to one of the consoles.

"I still don't see—"

"That's how you knew I was pretending to catch Wanda, and it's how you knew they were going to experiment on Nat."

Bruce nodded again.

Tony held up the cuff in triumph. "And that's how we prove it. It's not just a transmitter, Bruce, it's got a drive."

Wanda frowned at the mangled metal. "Does it still work?"

Tony's smile slipped into a mask of concentration. "Figuring that out now."

The cabin fell silent as the terminal before Tony processed. After a few seconds that felt like much more, Tony let out a whoop. "It's there. We've got the bastard."


	9. Chapter 9

T'Challa's face remained carefully blank as he heard Natasha out, reviewed the evidence.

Bruce knew better than to be here again, having this conversation again, but there he was anyway, almost holding his breath as he waited for an answer.

Finally, T'Challa gave a solemn nod. "It may be enough. To convict—" he cocked his head to one side, "perhaps. Perhaps not. But enough to have him replaced? It should be sufficient."

Bruce could hear Tony exhale, and watched Natasha's lips form a small, satisfied smile. 

"Thank you," she told T'Challa, real gratitude in her voice.

"It is not done yet," he warned.

"We understand. You'll call us when you know?"

He nodded, and the screen went blank.

Tony stood, brushed his hands against his pants. "Good. Right. Well, that's good. Right?"

"I think so," Natasha agreed.

Wanda crossed her arms over her chest, but her voice sounded almost hopeful "We'll see."

Steve nodded, his expression still grim.

"Well," Tony said into the silence that followed. "Nothing we can do about it now. Feel free to settle in. Your rooms are waiting for you, just like you left them." He turned to Bruce. "There's one for you too. C'mon."

Tony strode out of the conference room without looking back to see if Bruce would follow.

Bruce did, of course, watching the white walls of the compound with a feeling that verged on apprehension. The Compound wasn't as featureless as the Raft, but the facilities had something in common, something that spoke of a clean, blank power.

The room Tony led him to was bigger than the cell, with a bed that his bones ached to sink into, and better yet a window across the whole of one wall.

"Not the Ritz, but—" Tony shrugged. "You can always decorate. Friday will order you whatever you need."

Bruce nodded, vaguely confused at the idea that he'd order anything to decorate a room he'd occupy for a few days at best, but not yet ready to have that particular conversation. He sat on the bed, enjoying the firm give that was nothing at all like the cot in the cell. "Thanks. It's— it's great." As the words passed his lips, he was surprised to realize he meant it.

"Personally I think great's going a little far for a glorified dorm room, but who cares, right?" Tony shifted from one foot to another, as if deciding what to do next. He finally settled on a quick pat of Bruce's shoulder. "We were always going to get you out of there, no matter what. You knew that, right?"

Bruce nodded, because it was what Tony expected, the only answer Tony would accept. "Sure." The answer felt ungrateful, and he turned to face Tony, and give a little of the explanation he deserved. "It's— a place like that can mess with a guy's head."

"Tell me about it."

The words hung in the air as Bruce remembered what he'd heard about Tony's time in Afghanistan, before the suit and everything that followed. "Right. Well. I knew, but—"

"I get it." Tony clapped him on the shoulder again. "Look, it's been a long day, it's getting late, blah blah, I'll leave you to it."

And with that, Tony disappeared from the room.

Bruce sat there, thinking vaguely of lying down, wondering if it was worth seeking a toothbrush or a change of clothes or any of the niceties of the kind of pre-bed ritual that had been absent from his life for what felt like an eternity.

Inertia won out, and instead of doing any of those things he gazed out the window, which made the room feel open and free in spite of all that it had in common with the cell. The moon hung low in the dark sky, lighting up the open field before him. 

Eventually, he slept.

 

Breakfast the next morning was a surprisingly rowdy affair, with Wanda and Vision passing around waffles and assorted other breakfast foods to all the others.

Bruce ate quietly, contenting himself with the occasional chuckle as Tony and Sam exchanged digs and Natasha and Rhodes made careful small talk, and they all of them came together in the pretense that they were all in any way a team. Bruce could hear the tension underneath, all the conversations that hadn't yet been had, but for now none of them wanted to start. So—banter.

After breakfast Bruce carried a tray of dishes to the kitchen, where he found Steve carefully loading up the dishwasher. He greeted Bruce with a warm smile and a clap on the arm. "How are you holding up?"

In Bruce’s experience that question usually carried a subtext of threat assessment, but for once he could hear it as simple concern. He tried to answer in kind. "Okay, considering." He gestured around him. "This is— a lot better."

Steve followed Bruce's gesture, warriness in his eyes. "It's got its perks," he agreed, the words pulled grudgingly from his lips. He shifted his attention to the dishes again, scraping and loading in silence.

Bruce was about to go when Steve spoke again.

"You staying?"

Bruce opened his mouth but found no answer to give. "I don't know," he admitted. "It depends, I guess."

"Once Ross gets the boot, I mean."

"You really think he will?"

"He'd better. Or—" Steve shook his head. "I don't know."

"What about you? Are you going to stay?"

"No." The answer came fast and sure. "Even if it isn't Ross, all this—" He put down the dish he was holding, wiped his hands on a towel, and leaned back against the counter. "I was so gung ho to join the army," he mused. "Which you know—everybody knows that about me now, I guess. Back then, all I saw was the fight, and that was my way to get in it."

"Things were a little more black and white back then."

"It felt that way, anyhow. But now— there's no army I can trust. There are fights I have to fight—I can't sit them out." He met Bruce's eyes. "And whoever ends up running the Avengers, there's gonna be a day when I know I have to go, and they say it's none of my business. I can't agree to that."

Bruce nodded. It was more or less what he'd expected, he supposed. "It would be strange, to have the team without you."

"You'll get used to it."

"You think I'm going to stay."

"Am I wrong?"

Bruce frowned. He would have thought so, except— He allowed himself a moment to savor the idea of it—being back with the others, with people who could be trusted to keep the Other Guy's power pointed in the right direction. He wanted it, more than he could have guessed. "I guess not."

Steve nodded. "I'm glad. I think it'll be good. I really do. Just not for me."

Bruce looked down at the dish in his hand, disinclined to argue and unsure of what else he could say. A moment later, Friday's voice cut through the silence and made the point moot. "His Majesty King T'Challa has initiated a call in the conference room, and your attendance is requested."

Bruce's throat felt tight with a tension he hadn't expected. Only an hour ago he would have said that all he cared about was that Ross got the justice that was coming to him, and that the fate of the Avengers team didn't affect Bruce either way. But now he knew that, for him, both were on the line.

He looked up at Steve and gestured toward the conference room. Whether he was going to be on the team or not, he was a part of this. Steve nodded his agreement and the two of them made their way in.

Most of the others had beat them there. Natasha sat, her posture deceptively relaxed, while Tony radiated tension. Rhodes sat beside him, one hand on Tony's shoulder. Vision stood to one side, nodding a greeting to Sam and Wanda as they entered and turned to face the screen.

T'Challa nodded, apparently satisfied by the assembled group. "The Council has considered the evidence provided. There has been a certain degree of... disagreement," T'Challa spoke the word with distaste, "on the subject of Secretary Ross's culpability in this matter. Discussions are ongoing, but I am skeptical that he will receive the consequences he deserves."

The fist of tension around Bruce's throat drew tighter, his chest almost too weighed down to draw a breath. He'd expected this—should have expected this, knew to expect it—but it hit him like a blow to the gut anyway.

"Nevertheless," T'Challa continued, "wiser heads have prevailed as to the matter of the Avengers initiative. Ross has been removed as liaison between the Security Council and the team, and will have no further involvement."

"Damn right," Tony muttered. 

Natasha let out a long breath and smiled. “Thank you.”

“It was the evidence you procured that convinced them. Let us hope that it will be enough to remove him from all his positions of authority. But much of that is outside of our purview.”

“We understand,” Natasha agreed.

“That said, his activities will certainly merit a certain oversight from the Avengers going forward—to ensure that the threat he represents will be contained.”

“Yeah?” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “And what if whoever’s in charge next doesn’t agree?”

“Who’s it going to be, anyway?” Steve asked.

“That will be up to you. The Council has agreed that, so long as you are willing to liaise with the United Nations and heed its lawful decisions, the Avengers will best serve the world under their own direction.”

“And just what do you mean by… liaise?” Wanda’s lips curled in distaste at the word.

“The Council expects that you will maintain an open line of communications, sharing your assessments of any unusual threats, and addressing those threats with respect for international decisions.”

“All due respect,” Sam began, his voice conveying very little respect, “the battlefield’s not a great place for a committee meeting.”

“A fact I certainly appreciate. Which is why I suggested to the Council that I act as liaison myself. Should such an arrangement be acceptable.”

Natasha looked pleased, but said only “we’ll need to discuss it.”

“I understand.”

And with that, the screen went blank.

“Okay, so, good news, right?” Tony stood up, gestured toward the door. “Drinks all around.”

Steve actually smiled. “That much I can agree on.”

 

They all spilled into the common room, the sudden shock of relief making for an almost festive atmosphere.

Bruce hung back, unsure what to do next. He had been looking over his shoulder for Ross for so long, on his own for so long—or near enough to on his own that it should have been the same thing—that instead of the relief he ought to have felt, he was simply numb.

He watched as Natasha settled onto a couch with a satisfied smile on her face, turning to Rhodes and Vision for some kind of discussion of equipment or ammunition. Sam stiffened when Tony clapped him on the back, but his posture softened almost immediately, and he flashed a genuine grin in Tony’s direction.

"Halvah?" Wanda appeared at Bruce’s side, holding out a plate.

He turned to her, and as he did he searched his mind for the Other Guy's usual reaction, but found nothing. The Other Guy was still there, festering in the back of his head as always, but he had no particular reaction to Wanda's taking them both by surprise. Interesting.

Bruce picked out a piece of the halvah and took a bite. Bitter notes of the tahini offset the rich sweetness and made the whole thing much better than he'd expected. "It's good."

She smiled. "I know." She leaned back against the wall, apparently not about to go out of her way to offer the halvah around to the others just yet.

Bruce finished his off in a couple more slow bites. "Thank you."

Wanda shrugged. "Cooking passes the time."

"I mean, for—" He wasn't entirely sure how to put into words the swell of gratitude he felt. He couldn't remember what it was for, why he knew that in the Raft, the Other Guy's restraint had had to do with her. Somewhere in his memory the touch of her mind lingered, as reassuring now as it had been aggravating before. "Whatever you did," he finally continued, "in there. With the Other Guy."

"We made a good team. I think, maybe, he forgives me."

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I think so.”

They feel back into silence.

Bruce surveyed the room again. Tony had produced a couple of bottles of champagne from somewhere. The pop of the cork made him flinch and he laughed at himself as he watched Tony pour drinks all around.

Tony looked up to meet his eyes and gestured them over, holding out a pair of glasses.

"It's ten in the morning."

Tony shook his head in disgust. "It's never too early for champagne. I'm sure we can scrounge up some orange juice if that will make you feel better."

Bruce shook his head and took the glass. Wanda took hers as well, and Tony turned back to the room. "To the Avengers."

The words echoed back, even on Sam and Steve's lips, and Bruce found himself joining them. "The Avengers."

 

Hours later Bruce found himself clearing the empty bottles and glasses away, the room finally quiet again. Sam emerged from the hallway to the personal quarters, and Bruce was surprised in spite of himself to see that he was packed already, a bag slung over one shoulder and an odd little drone perched on the other.

"You too?"

Sam nodded.

Bruce nodded back. "Probably better that Steve isn't heading out alone."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "But you know that's not why, right?"

Bruce thought about that. "Not really."

"I've seen a lot of orders. Followed most of 'em. Even when maybe I shouldn't have."

"Sometimes there isn't much choice." 

"Yeah, but sometimes there is. Orders are easy. When you're in it, sometimes it's easier not to see what they're about."

Bruce thought of the experiment that had started--or ended--everything for him, and almost laughed. "Yeah. I've got some experience with that."

"I know." Sam let his duffle drop onto the couch, and settled himself beside it. 

Bruce put down the classes he'd been holding. "So why the lecture?"

Sam shook his head. "Not a lecture. An explanation. It's why all this--" he gestured around, "it's not for me."

"And you don't think it's for me either."

Sam considered. "I wouldn't say that. You know how to make your own choices. Just be careful, with how all of this shakes out."

"Yeah. You too."

Footsteps echoed down the hall again, and this time Steve stepped out, Wanda beside him.

"He is leaving," Wanda told Bruce, giving Steve a gentle slap on the shoulder.

"I know." He nodded at Sam. "Him too."

Wanda shook her head. "We could do so much here."

"And you will," Steve agreed. He pulled the burner phone out of his pocket and held it up. "You need us, you give us a call."

She stopped, as if only then realizing that Steve wouldn't be persuaded to stay. "It will not be the same."

"Nothing ever is." Steve shifted the pack. 

Sam took that as his cue to stand and shoulder his own bag. 

Steve turned to him. "You sure? It's not like I haven't been on my own before."

"Have you?" Sam asked, his tone skeptical. But then he shook his head. "You know that isn't the reason."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. He turned back to Wanda. "We could always use the company."

She shook her head. "This is my place. For now."

He nodded. "Bruce?" Then he smiled. "I don't need to ask, do I?"

Bruce shook his head, feeling strangely sure, and strangely calm. "You'll be missed."

"You too." He gave a little wave of his hand, almost a salute. Nothing more to say, they left.

Bruce and Wanda watched them go, and listened in silence as their footsteps receded down the hall. When those were gone as well, Wanda turned to him. "What now?" she asked.

He considered. "I guess we'll find out."


End file.
